The First Cit­i­zens Group earned prof­it be­fore tax of $790.8 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2015 and now has as­sets to­tal­ing $37.5 bil­lion which in­cludes pro­ceeds for the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny's ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing (IPO) of $2.7 bil­lion.

The group's lat­est fi­nan­cial re­port, which has been post­ed to the T&T Stock Ex­change, al­so shows prof­it af­ter tax of $630.4 mil­lion.

"There was al­so sig­nif­i­cant growth in both our cus­tomer loans and in­vest­ments port­fo­lios of 24 per cent and 15.8 per cent re­spec­tive­ly. The group's fund­ing base grew mar­gin­al­ly by 0.1 per cent to $27.7 bil­lion," Group CEO Karen Dar­basie said in her re­port to share­hold­ers.

"We have been able to sig­nif­i­cant­ly grow our loan and in­vest­ment port­fo­lio while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly fo­cus­ing on our as­set qual­i­ty to en­sure im­prove­ments in our delin­quen­cy ra­tios and non­per­form­ing loans (NPLs) ra­tios."

At the end of 2015 First Cit­i­zens' NPLs as a per­cent­age of to­tal loans stood at 3.39 per cent.

Dar­bar­sie said at a time of chal­lenges in the glob­al eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment and signs of re­ces­sion in the lo­cal econ­o­my, First Cit­i­zens is fo­cused on its non-in­ter­est in­come prod­uct set, which has shown good growth with­in the last year. The group's fee gen­er­at­ing busi­ness­es in­clud­ing elec­tron­ic bank­ing and lo­cal cap­i­tal mar­kets have grown, she said.

"In ad­di­tion we are see­ing the pos­i­tive im­pact of our in­vest­ments in our busi­ness­es in Bar­ba­dos and Cos­ta Ri­ca with­in the con­text of our group di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy.

Dar­basie said the group's sub­sidiaries per­formed well, ex­pand­ing the range of prod­ucts and ser­vices they of­fer and grow­ing in mar­ket share and prof­itabil­i­ty.

She added: "The As­set Man­age­ment Com­pa­ny has in­creased as­sets un­der man­age­ment from $13.9 bil­lion to $15.3 bil­lion and its prof­it be­fore tax from $95.8 mil­lion to $111.9 mil­lion.

"Trustee Com­pa­ny fo­cused on stream­lin­ing its op­er­a­tions and in­creas­ing its rev­enue gen­er­at­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty, with fee in­come in­creas­ing from $36.1 mil­lion in 2014 to $39.8 mil­lion in 2015. The First Cit­i­zens In­vest­ment Ser­vices Ltd al­so con­tributed $131.1 mil­lion to prof­it be­fore tax."

She said based on the con­di­tion of the lo­cal and re­gion­al economies, First Cit­i­zens will con­tin­ue its ef­forts at man­ag­ing ex­pens­es and en­sur­ing ro­bust risk man­age­ment.

"Fo­cus re­mains on these two main ar­eas in or­der to en­sure that the growth and sta­bil­i­ty of the Group con­tin­ue," she said.