Ma­jor­i­ty state-owned First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd yes­ter­day dis­closed that it record­ed au­dit­ed prof­it af­ter tax of $776.75 mil­lion for its fi­nan­cial year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023. That was an in­crease of 5.89 per cent over the $733.50 mil­lion the Port-of-Spain-based fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pared earned in 2022.

The group’s 2023 prof­it of $776.75 mil­lion ex­ceeds the $752 mil­lion prof­it af­ter tax First Cit­i­zen de­clared in 2019, the full fi­nan­cial year be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic de­pressed bank prof­itabil­i­ty.

The bank’s prof­it be­fore tax for its 2023 fi­nan­cial year was $1.069 bil­lion, which was 15.94 per cent more than it earned for the 2022 fi­nan­cial year. The First Cit­i­zens prof­it be­fore tax in 2023 just ex­ceed­ed the $1.063 bil­lion it re­port­ed in 2019.

The fi­nan­cial hold­ing com­pa­ny’s net in­ter­est in­come (which is the dif­fer­ence be­tween the rev­enue gen­er­at­ed from its in­ter­est-bear­ing as­sets and the ex­pens­es as­so­ci­at­ed with pay­ing on its in­ter­est-bear­ing li­a­bil­i­ties)amount­ed to $1.85 bil­lion in 2023. That is an in­crease of 24.54 per cent on the $1.49 bil­lion in net in­ter­est in­come First Cit­i­zens re­port­ed in 2022.

The bank’s to­tal as­sets de­clined by 1.4 per cent, drop­ping from $45.43 bil­lion in 2022 to $44.79 bil­lion in 2023. But the group’s loans to cus­tomers in­creased by 6.36 per cent, mov­ing from $18.88 bil­lion in 2022 to $20.08 bil­lion in 2023.

Cus­tomers’ de­posits in­creased mar­gin­al­ly from $28.37 bil­lion in 2022 to $28.65 bil­lion in $28.65 bil­lion.

The First Cit­i­zens earn­ings per share in 2023 to­talled $3.08, which was 5.84 per cent more than the earn­ings per share of $2.91 in its 2022 fi­nan­cial year.

The bank de­clared a fi­nal div­i­dend of $0.68 a share for its fourth quar­ter. That div­i­dend, which will be paid on De­cem­ber 28, 2023, brings its div­i­dend pay­out for its 2023 fi­nan­cial year to $2 per share. That an­nu­al div­i­dend rep­re­sents 64.93 per cent of the First Cit­i­zens earn­ings per share of $3.08.

The 2023 div­i­dend of $2 per share is 25 per cent more than the $1.60 First Cit­i­zens dis­trib­uted in 2022.

Apart from T&T, First Cit­i­zens has op­er­a­tions in Bar­ba­dos, St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent in the East­ern Caribbean. The St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent op­er­a­tions are sub­sidiaries of First Cit­i­zens In­vest­ment Ser­vices (FCIS), the in­vest­ment and wealth man­age­ment arm of the group. First Cit­i­zens al­so has an op­er­a­tion in Cos­ta Ri­ca, which par­tic­i­pates in loans that have been orig­i­nat­ed by mul­ti­lat­er­al lend­ing agen­cies for cus­tomers in Latin Amer­i­ca.

First Cit­i­zens CEO Karen Dar­basie said T&T ac­count­ed for rough­ly 85 per cent of the bank’s bal­ance sheet as at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2020, but that dropped to 80 per cent at the end of its 2022 fi­nan­cial year end.

“Our re­gion­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, even though it’s based on or­gan­ic growth, has re­sult­ed just over that short pe­ri­od, in that shift to a big­ger con­tri­bu­tion of the re­gion­al as­set base to the group’s as­sets. It’s trend­ing in a sim­i­lar di­rec­tion this year (2023). Once we pub­lish, we’ll be able to give you the specifics on that. But the trend has con­tin­ued, that much I can tell you, as our re­gion­al as­sets are con­tribut­ing a greater and greater per­cent­age,” said the First Cit­i­zens CEO.