WASHINGTON – Savings and loans reported their highest profit since 2007 as lenders recover from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision said.

Thrifts had total profits of $1.82 billion in the first quarter, more than four times the $442 million profit in the preceding three-month period, the OTS said last week in its quarterly report.

The agency included 50 thrifts on its confidential list of so-called problem lenders required to boost capital and liquidity, up from 43 in the fourth quarter of 2009.

“The health of the thrift industry is improving, but we cannot say the industry has fully recovered from the financial crisis,” OTS acting Director John Bowman said.

Savings and loans returned to profitability last year after reporting total losses of $15.9 billion in 2008 as the collapse of the mortgage market led to the failures of Washington Mutual Inc. and Indymac Bancorp Inc.

On May 20, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said banks posted profit of $18 billion in the first quarter.

Regulators are closing banks and thrifts at the fastest pace since the end of the savings-and-loan crisis in the 1990s in what FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair has called the clean-up phase after the housing market collapse. Five thrifts have been shuttered this year among the 73 lenders seized as of May 24.

President Obama has proposed eliminating the OTS, which was faulted for lax oversight before the housing crisis, as part of a broad overhaul of U.S. financial-industry rules.