An­tho­ny Smart has been re-elect­ed as chair­man of the First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (FCGFH) board.

A new board was elect­ed dur­ing the third an­nu­al share­hold­er meet­ing at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Port of Spain on Tues­day.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day, First Cit­i­zens Group said in ad­di­tion to Smart, the di­rec­tors who were re-elect­ed were: Courte­nay B Williams, Sav­it­ree Seep­er­sad, Idrees Omardeen, Jay­selle Mc­Far­lane, Troy Gar­cia and Col­in Wharfe.

The state­ment said they will con­tin­ue to bring their ex­per­tise and lead­er­ship to guide the or­gan­i­sa­tion for the next term ahead. Al­so at the meet­ing, the group chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Karen Dar­basie ad­vised that ef­fec­tive March 21, the shares of the re­main­ing sub­sidiaries of First Cit­i­zens Bank Ltd were trans­ferred from the bank to FCGFH.

Dar­basie pro­vid­ed in­sights in­to the group’s per­for­mance and strate­gic di­rec­tion, out­lin­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s ap­proach to bet­ter serve cus­tomers and con­tin­ue to pos­i­tive­ly im­pact com­mu­ni­ties.

Dar­basie stat­ed: “I am pleased to re­port to our share­hold­ers the Group’s prof­itabil­i­ty, progress, and pro­jec­tions as a re­sult of the ded­i­ca­tion and hard work of my First Cit­i­zens team.
In its fi­nan­cials, the group re­port­ed prof­it af­ter tax for the nine-month pe­ri­od end­ed June 30, 2024 of $684.5 mil­lion.

This rep­re­sent­ed a 15.5 per cent in­crease when com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.
The group’s to­tal as­sets as of June 30, 2024, amount­ed to $46.4 bil­lion, which was four per cent high­er than for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.

The bank’s loans to cus­tomers in­creased to $21.17 bil­lion for the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, which was 6.4 per cent high­er than for the same pe­ri­od in 2023.
In its third quar­ter, the First Cit­i­zens Group gen­er­at­ed prof­it be­fore tax of $330.9 mil­lion, bring­ing the year-to-date prof­it be­fore tax for the nine-month pe­ri­od to $933.2 mil­lion.

The bank’s board de­clared a third in­ter­im div­i­dend of $0.52 cents per or­di­nary share. When paid, this pay­ment will bring the to­tal in­ter­im div­i­dend pay­ment for the fi­nan­cial year 2024 to $1.49 per or­di­nary share com­pared to $1.32 for the com­pa­ra­ble pe­ri­od in 2023.