First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank Lim­it­ed's net in­come of $34.3 mil­lion for the sec­ond quar­ter of the fis­cal year is up by US$8.7 mil­lion or 34 per cent from the $25.6 mil­lion record­ed a year ago.

The bank's fi­nan­cial re­sults for the six months end­ed April 30, which have been post­ed on the T&T Stock Ex­change, show net in­come of US$73 mil­lion, up US$20.8 mil­lion or 40 per cent. First­Caribbean CEO Gary Brown de­scribed this as a sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment on last year's per­for­mance with net in­come of US$52.2 mil­lion.

Brown said: "To­tal rev­enue was US$270.2 mil­lion, up US$13.5 mil­lion or five per cent com­pared with the same pe­ri­od last year pri­mar­i­ly due to low­er fund­ing costs and high­er non-in­ter­est in­come.

"The bank's pro­duc­tive loan growth has been en­cour­ag­ing across both re­tail and whole­sale bank­ing seg­ments, how­ev­er re­gion­al economies have been slow to re­cov­er as re­flect­ed by gen­er­al­ly low cred­it de­mand and un­even in­vest­ment ac­tiv­i­ty. Sus­tained, prof­itable growth con­tin­ues to be a key pri­or­i­ty for the bank."

The bank's op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es of US$180.1 mil­lion were up US$7.8 mil­lion or five per cent from the same pe­ri­od in 2015 pri­mar­i­ly due to high­er busi­ness tax­es and project re­lat­ed spend.

"We con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from dis­cre­tionary ex­pense con­trol and on­go­ing sav­ings from the re­struc­tur­ing pro­gramme ini­ti­at­ed in 2014, but al­so con­tin­ue to in­vest in our fran­chise through project re­lat­ed spend," Brown said.

"Loan loss im­pair­ment ex­pense was down sig­nif­i­cant­ly by US$19.8 mil­lion or 72 per cent com­pared with the same pe­ri­od in the pri­or year. An im­proved loss ex­pe­ri­ence and en­hanced loan re­cov­ery ac­tiv­i­ty un­der­line the low­er loan loss­es."