The First Cit­i­zens yes­ter­day re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax of $179.9 mil­lion for the three months end­ing De­cem­ber 31, 2015, which rep­re­sents an in­crease of 1.2 per cent com­pared with the pre­vi­ous year, ac­cord­ing to the bank's chair­man An­tho­ny Smart.

First Cit­i­zens' non-in­ter­est in­come in­creased by 33.7 per cent, com­pared with its first quar­ter in 2014, which was "in keep­ing with our in­come di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy, due to in­creased con­tri­bu­tions from fee-based busi­ness lines."

The bank said that the im­pact of low­er oil prices on the do­mes­tic econ­o­my makes proac­tive as­set man­age­ment crit­i­cal, and it is con­tin­u­ing to re­de­ploy as­set to achieve high­er yields.

Ac­cord­ing to the bank, the im­pact of that strat­e­gy was ev­i­dent in the re­duc­tion of its loan notes and in­creas­es in loans to cus­tomers. The bank re­duced its loan notes by 60 per cent, while its loans to cus­tomers in­creased by 12.7 per cent to $13.48 bil­lion. Loans to cus­tomers com­prised just un­der one-third of the bank's to­tal as­set in its first quar­ter.

Chair­man Smart said the board of the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned bank con­tin­ued to be proud of the strength of the bank­ing group, stat­ing: "Our bal­ance sheet is well cap­i­talised and shows strong liq­uid­i­ty buffers and a di­ver­si­fied fund­ing base."

In an Ini­tial Pub­lic Of­fer­ing in 2013, the State sold 20 per cent of its 96 per cent stake in the hold­ing com­pa­ny for the bank.