The Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) achieved a prof­it at­trib­ut­able to eq­ui­ty hold­ers of $2 bil­lion for the year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2024.

This is an in­crease of $250 mil­lion or 14.6 per cent over the prof­it of $1.75 bil­lion re­port­ed for the fi­nal year end­ed Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023, ac­cord­ing to a news re­lease from the fi­nan­cial ser­vices group yes­ter­day.

In an­nounc­ing the fourth quar­ter re­sults, RFHL’s chair­man, Vin­cent Pereira, said that through­out the fi­nal year, the group made no­table progress in ex­e­cut­ing on its strat­e­gy. By max­imis­ing the val­ue of its core busi­ness seg­ments—re­tail, mort­gage, SME, and cor­po­rate mar­kets— and through the group’s com­mer­cial ex­cel­lence pro­gramme, the com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to op­ti­mise ef­fi­cien­cy and to sim­pli­fy the way the group de­liv­ers per­for­mance.

In ad­di­tion to this, RFHL con­tin­ues to strate­gi­cal­ly ex­pand in the ar­eas of in­sur­ance and wealth man­age­ment. This val­ue-led growth ap­proach has en­abled the group to so­lid­i­fy its mar­ket pres­ence while con­tin­u­ing to cre­ate space to ex­plore new op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Pereira fur­ther stat­ed that the board of di­rec­tors has de­clared a fi­nal div­i­dend of $3.55 per share, bring­ing the to­tal div­i­dend to $5.70 per share for the fis­cal year (2023: $5.20). That is an in­crease of 9.6 per cent or $0.50, over the pre­vi­ous year, in line with the 9.2 per cent in­crease in its core prof­its af­ter tax.

The fi­nal div­i­dend, Pereira said, will be paid on De­cem­ber 4, 2024, to share­hold­ers on record as of No­vem­ber 21, 2024.

“With a clos­ing share price of $111.93, this equates to a div­i­dend yield of 5.09 per cent (2023: 4.30 per cent). The Group’s cap­i­tal ad­e­qua­cy ra­tios re­main ro­bust across all coun­tries and at the con­sol­i­dat­ed lev­el,” said Pereira.

In ad­di­tion to re­port­ing the fourth quar­ter re­sults, Pereira al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to high­light the work be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Group on the sus­tain­abil­i­ty front.

Dur­ing 2024, he said the Group con­tin­ued to grow its sus­tain­abil­i­ty, ca­pa­bil­i­ty and fo­cus, en­sur­ing that this re­mains a pri­or­i­ty as it makes strides in re­duc­ing its en­vi­ron­men­tal foot­print, im­prov­ing en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy, and sup­port­ing our cus­tomers through fi­nanc­ing for sus­tain­able growth.

“In line with this com­mit­ment, Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd host­ed its in­au­gur­al Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Ex­po on Sep­tem­ber 13 and 14, 2024 in Trinidad and To­ba­go fea­tur­ing 126 ex­hibitors and at­tract­ing over 3000 par­tic­i­pants. The Ex­po was a suc­cess and pro­vid­ed a plat­form for like-mind­ed busi­ness­es and con­sumers to ex­plore in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions aligned with the Group’s sus­tain­able fi­nance prac­tices and long-term growth,” Pereira added.

As at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2023, RFHL op­er­at­ed in 14 ter­ri­to­ries, 13 in the Caribbean re­gion and one in West Africa, in Ghana, ac­cord­ing to its 2023 an­nu­al re­port. The group, which is the re­gion's largest in­dige­nous fi­nan­cial com­pa­ny, had 6,810 em­ploy­ees at the end of its 2023 fi­nan­cial year.