The First Cit­i­zens Group has record­ed a prof­it be­fore tax of $220.9 mil­lion for the quar­ter end­ed 31 March 2022.

This brought the group’s year-to-date prof­it be­fore tax for the six-month pe­ri­od to $469.3 mil­lion.

Prof­it af­ter tax for the six-month pe­ri­od amount­ed to $335.2 mil­lion which rep­re­sents an 8.8% in­crease when com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od to March 2021.

First Cit­i­zens Chair­man An­tho­ny Smart said the per­for­mance “is a pos­i­tive demon­stra­tion of the Group’s ef­forts to re­cov­er to pre-Covid-19 pan­dem­ic per­for­mance lev­els.”

Smart said, “Our per­for­mance con­tin­ues its up­ward trend since 2020 and is in align­ment with eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery both do­mes­ti­cal­ly and glob­al­ly. The Group re­mains cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic on fu­ture growth. While Con­sumer lend­ing re­mains mut­ed, Com­mer­cial lend­ing is trend­ing up­wards, aris­ing from the sig­nif­i­cant re­lax­ation of Covid-19 re­stric­tions and the cor­re­spond­ing in­crease in busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty. This is a time­ly re­lief for our econ­o­my, as slug­gish em­ploy­ment con­di­tions and in­creas­ing im­port­ed in­fla­tion, would have slowed the rate of con­sumer lend­ing. Glob­al­ly, the con­flict be­tween Rus­sia and Ukraine has re­sult­ed in high­er en­er­gy prices and ex­ac­er­bat­ed sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions.”

Smart said the group would mon­i­tor these con­di­tions and its im­pact on op­er­a­tions.

He said,”First Cit­i­zens con­tin­ues to strate­gi­cal­ly fo­cus on keep­ing our op­er­a­tions safe, sta­ble and com­pet­i­tive. Our dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion strat­e­gy will pro­vide us with im­proved op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies through au­toma­tion and fric­tion­less work­flows and en­hanced ca­pa­bil­i­ty to de­liv­er new dig­i­tal prod­ucts and ser­vices. As we dri­ve for growth and share­hold­er val­ue cre­ation via the strate­gic pil­lar of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, we will con­tin­ue to ac­tive­ly progress all op­tions to ex­pand our core bank­ing busi­ness in­to po­ten­tial new mar­kets and ter­ri­to­ries.”