In­ter­na­tion­al cred­it rat­ing agency S&P Glob­al has reaf­firmed the rat­ings of the First Cit­i­zens Bank Ltd (FCBL) at bbb.

In the ex­pla­na­tion of the rat­ing for the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned bank, S&P said, “We ex­pect First Cit­i­zens Bank Ltd (FCBL) to main­tain ad­e­quate in­trin­sic cred­it­wor­thi­ness through 2026 and 2027. We think the bank will con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from sound cap­i­tal, liq­uid­i­ty, and cred­it loss re­serves, pro­tect­ing its cred­it­wor­thi­ness from hy­po­thet­i­cal strains on as­set qual­i­ty amid Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (T&T’s) frag­ile eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery and gov­ern­ment fis­cal chal­lenges. In ad­di­tion, the bank has ad­e­quate in­come di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, a strong mar­ket po­si­tion in the do­mes­tic bank­ing sys­tem, and a di­ver­si­fied fund­ing base. FCBL’s stand-alone cred­it pro­file (SACP) re­mains ‘bbb’.”

How­ev­er, the New York-based rat­ing agency con­firmed it main­tained a neg­a­tive out­look for the bank due to con­cern about T&T’s econ­o­my’s con­tin­ued de­pen­dence on the en­er­gy sec­tor, which is chal­lenged by volatile con­di­tions.

“The neg­a­tive out­look on FCBL mir­rors that on T&T, re­flect­ing our view that there is at least a one-in-three chance we could low­er the sov­er­eign rat­ings over the next 12 months. The coun­try’s long-term growth has been slow while fis­cal and ex­ter­nal buffers have grad­u­al­ly weak­ened. There has been on­ly lim­it­ed progress over many years in di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my, leav­ing it vul­ner­a­ble to volatile en­er­gy prices, while out­put from the oil and gas sec­tor has re­mained con­strained,” the rat­ing agency said.

Chair­man of First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (FCB) and First Cit­i­zens Hold­ings Ltd, Shankar Bidaisee, was pleased that the as­sess­ment.

He said, “This as­sess­ment recog­nis­es sev­er­al key strengths of the bank, in­clud­ing the bank’s very strong cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion, its di­ver­si­fied busi­ness pro­file and its over­all sound liq­uid­i­ty po­si­tion. The S&P re­port­ed that the bank’s risk-ad­just­ed cap­i­tal ra­tio stood at 15.2 per cent at the end of 2025, while our reg­u­la­to­ry cap­i­tal ad­e­qua­cy ra­tio has re­mained be­tween 16 and around 18 per cent in re­cent years. Well, with­in the bank­ing in­dus­try, that’s well above the 13.5 per cent min­i­mum re­quire­ment as cit­ed in the re­port.”

He con­tin­ued, “For First Cit­i­zens, this is a strong af­fir­ma­tion of the im­por­tance we place on cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance, pru­dent risk man­age­ment and sus­tain­able growth. This board rec­og­nizes that sus­tain­able fi­nan­cial po­si­tion must be built on strong gov­er­nance, ef­fec­tive in­ter­nal con­trols and dis­ci­plined risk man­age­ment.”

He ex­plained that the First Cit­i­zens Group was look­ing over­seas to ex­pand its port­fo­lio.

He said, “Our lend­ing port­fo­lio is very much di­ver­si­fied across cor­po­rate and gov­ern­ment lend­ing, con­sumer lend­ing and mort­gages, as you know. And at the group lev­el, we are ac­tu­al­ly pur­su­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to di­ver­si­fy our as­sets across the wider Caribbean and now in South Amer­i­ca. So, well, the bank has a sub­stan­tial as­set base and cap­i­tal base.”

Bidaisee said the group was al­so look­ing at av­enues for fur­ther growth es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic cli­mate. —Pe­ter Christo­pher