Japan bank MUFG's 9-month profit falls 8 pct, hurt by credit costs

TOKYO, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc reported on Monday an 8 percent decline in profit for the nine months ended in December, in the absence of windfall gains from bad-loan reserves that boosted the year-earlier results.

Japan's largest lender by assets said net profit for April-December came in at 852.3 billion yen ($7 billion), down from 927 billion yen a year earlier.

The bank said growth in profit from overseas lending activities made up for tepid credit demand at home for the period.

But the lender's bottomline was partly hurt by credit costs, in a reversal from the year-earlier period when it booked profits from the release of bad-loan provisions.

MUFG and its rival Japanese banks enjoyed one-time gains in past years after they clawed back part of reserves for bad loans after the risk profile of borrowers improved.

For the full year through March, MUFG kept its net profit forecast at 950 billion yen, down 8 percent from the previous year, and below an average estimate of 1.09 trillion yen in a poll of 15 analysts by Thomson Reuters.

($1 = 121.3000 yen) (Reporting by Taiga Uranaka; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)