The First Cit­i­zens Group has record­ed a Prof­it Be­fore Tax of $275.3 mil­lion for the three months end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2022, its chair­man An­tho­ny Smart has stat­ed.

This was a 10.8 per cent growth when com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2021.

Prof­it af­ter tax amount­ed to $199.5 Mil­lion, a 9.9 per cent in­crease com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2021.

“Com­pared to 30 Sep­tem­ber 2022, there was a mar­gin­al de­crease (0.1 per cent) in the Group’s To­tal As­sets val­ued at $45.4 bil­lion as at 31 De­cem­ber 2022. While in­vest­ments se­cu­ri­ties de­creased by $0.9 bil­lion as a re­sult of the re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of T-Bills to­talling $0.8 bil­lion ma­tur­ing in less than 90 days to cash and cash equiv­a­lent, loans to cus­tomers in­creased by $450.8 mil­lion or 2.4 per cent to $19.3 bil­lion,” Smart stat­ed in his chair­man’s re­port.

“In the ab­sence of this re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion, the in­vest­ment port­fo­lio would have re­mained com­par­a­tive­ly flat,” he stat­ed.

Smart said as a re­sult of this per­for­mance, the Board has de­clared an in­ter­im div­i­dend of $0.43 per or­di­nary share which is a 7.5 per cent in­crease over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od of the pri­or fi­nan­cial year.

This div­i­dend will be paid on March 3 to share­hold­ers on record as at Feb­ru­ary 15.

“These fig­ures are re­flec­tive of the adop­tion of our di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strate­gies, mea­sures tak­en to im­prove our ef­fi­cien­cy and our proven risk man­age­ment poli­cies. The group’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion re­mains a pri­or­i­ty and, cou­pled with our oth­er strate­gic ini­tia­tives, we are very con­fi­dent that we are well po­si­tioned to serve our com­mu­ni­ties and main­tain our com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage,” Smart stat­ed.

“I wish to ac­knowl­edge the con­tin­ued loy­al­ty and sup­port of our em­ploy­ees and fel­low Di­rec­tors dur­ing this pe­ri­od and ex­press my sin­cere grat­i­tude to our cus­tomers, and oth­er stake­hold­ers for their in­valu­able con­tri­bu­tions to­wards the suc­cess of the Group,” he stat­ed.