Bank of Nova Scotia today said its first-quarter earnings rose 15% to a record $788 million.

The bank said lower provisions for bad loans and stronger markets-related revenue helped boost first-quarter profit.

Net income for the quarter ended January 31 amounted to 77¢ a share. That compares with $688 million, or 67¢ per share, for the year earlier period.

Analysts’ consensus forecast was for earnings of 72¢ a share, according to Thomson One Analytics.

Revenue rose 3% to $2.61 billion from $2.54 billion, helped particularly by stronger results from international operations and Scotia Capital, the bank’s investment banking unit.

Loan loss provisions were $74 million, down from $170 million in the year-before quarter, while return on equity rose to 21% from 19.4%.

“Our strategy of diversifying across business platforms and geography has once again generated record results with solid contributions from all three business lines,” CEO Rick Waugh said in a release.

“The Bank benefited from increases in trading and investment banking revenue in Scotia Capital, continued strong performance in International Banking, particularly in our Caribbean and Mexican operations, and solid contributions from a wide variety of product lines in the Domestic Bank.

“Good credit quality in all business lines also contributed to the record bottom line.”

Scotiabank, which has operations in about 50 countries and is pushing to expand internationally, reiterated warnings that 2005 earnings could suffer from the negative effects of the stronger Canadian dollar, margin compression and slower lending growth.