Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (RFHL) an­nounced yes­ter­day a prof­it at­trib­ut­able to share­hold­ers of the par­ent of $774 mil­lion for the nine-month pe­ri­od end­ed June 30, 2020.

This prof­it rep­re­sent­ed a de­cline of $458 mil­lion or 37.2 per cent be­low the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

In re­lease the bank not­ed: “These re­sults re­flect the fi­nan­cial im­pact so far of the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic on the Group, main­ly re­sult­ing from de­creased eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, nar­row­er mar­gins due to re­duced lend­ing in­ter­est rates, waiv­er of fees and com­mis­sions and the set­ting aside of ad­di­tion­al cred­it pro­vi­sions to cov­er po­ten­tial fu­ture loss­es.”

RFHL said that the on­go­ing un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the cur­rent and po­ten­tial im­pacts of the pan­dem­ic de­mands that the Group con­tin­ues to ex­er­cise pru­dence as it nav­i­gates the way for­ward in the best in­ter­est of all its stake­hold­ers.

In an­nounc­ing the re­sults RFHL Chair­man Vin­cent Pereira said, “To­tal as­sets stood at $105.3 bil­lion at June 30, 2020, an in­crease of $19.9 bil­lion or 23.2 per cent over the to­tal as­sets at June 30, 2019.”

Pereira ex­plained that the in­crease was, in the main, due to the ac­qui­si­tion of Sco­tia­bank’s bank­ing op­er­a­tions in St. Maarten and the East­ern Caribbean (An­guil­la, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lu­cia, and St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines) on No­vem­ber 1, 2019.

The chair­man not­ed that the ac­qui­si­tion added $12.7 bil­lion, while the oth­er ac­qui­si­tion of Sco­tia­bank’s op­er­a­tions in the British Vir­gin Is­lands (BVI) on June 1, 2020 added a fur­ther $ 3.1 bil­lion to the Group’s as­set base.

Pereira went on to say that the bank re­mains com­mit­ted to its clients dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.

In ad­di­tion to the mea­sures al­ready in­sti­tut­ed by the Group, Pereira said it is work­ing close­ly with all its busi­ness clients to iden­ti­fy ap­pro­pri­ate fi­nanc­ing struc­tures to fa­cil­i­tate the con­tin­ued suc­cess of their re­spec­tive busi­ness­es.

He said RFHL is al­so work­ing with its re­tail clients to agree to suit­able loan re­pay­ment struc­tures.

Pereira con­clud­ed, “Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed re­mains com­mit­ted to bal­anc­ing the in­ter­ests of all our stake­hold­ers in the ter­ri­to­ries in which we op­er­ate and to as­sist­ing in the re­cov­ery of the economies of these ter­ri­to­ries.”