The First Cit­i­zens Group has con­clud­ed a prof­itable quar­ter end­ed March 31 with prof­it af­ter tax of $153.5 mil­lion.The bank­ing group's unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the six months end­ed March 31 shows year to date prof­it of $333.4 mil­lion–an in­crease of 2.4 per cent over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2015.

To­tal as­sets stood at $37.9 bil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing growth of 1 per cent.

Chair­man An­tho­ny Smart, in his re­port to share­hold­ers, said cus­tomer de­posits in­creased by 13.5 per cent to $29.2 bil­lion and along with the group's strong cap­i­tal base "has po­si­tioned First Cit­i­zens for fu­ture lend­ing in the do­mes­tic mar­ket and with­in the re­gion."

He said: "Ad­di­tion­al­ly, in Feb­ru­ary 2016, First Cit­i­zens re­paid our US$175 mil­lion in­ter­na­tion­al fixed rate bond, which re­sult­ed in an im­proved ef­fi­cien­cy in our trea­sury op­er­a­tions. We will con­tin­ue to fo­cus on trea­sury man­age­ment and cost con­tain­ment strate­gies for the rest of this year."

For the six-month pe­ri­od, First Cit­i­zens earn­ing per share in­creased by 3 cent to $1.33. The board has de­clared an in­ter­im div­i­dend of 56 cents per or­di­nary share, which is an in­crease over the in­ter­im div­i­dend of 58 cent paid in 2015.

Smart said: "We con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor very close­ly the cur­rent en­vi­ron­ment and the re­sult­ing im­pact on eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties. Notwith­stand­ing, First Cit­i­zens will con­tin­ue to fo­cus on strength­en­ing its bal­ance sheet and mea­sures to im­prove its ef­fi­cient and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of its prod­uct lines."