First Cit­i­zens’ prof­it af­ter tax­a­tion fell by 60 per cent for the three months end­ed June 2020 when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year.

Ac­cord­ing to First Cit­i­zens’ unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the three months end­ed June 2020 prof­it af­ter tax­a­tion was $62.225 mil­lion.

First Cit­i­zens’ prof­it af­ter tax­a­tion for the same three months last year was $158.098 mil­lion.

T&T record­ed its first case of COVID-19 on March 12.

“As the world con­tin­ues to grap­ple with un­cer­tain­ties brought about by the COVID-19 cri­sis, the neg­a­tive im­pact on our econ­o­my and the com­mu­ni­ties we serve are be­com­ing more ev­i­dent,” An­tho­ny Smart said in the chair­man’s re­view.

“These chal­lenges are re­flect­ed in our third quar­ter year-to-date Prof­it Af­ter tax of $467 mil­lion, which re­flects a 15.6 per cent de­cline com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing 2019 fis­cal pe­ri­od,” he stat­ed.

“Af­ter three months of re­stric­tions on move­ment to pre­vent the spread of the virus, with the com­men­su­rate im­pact on the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, our in­formed im­pair­ment as­sess­ment, in ac­cor­dance with In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Re­port­ing Stan­dard (IFRS) 9, has re­sult­ed in a $140 mil­lion in­crease in Ex­pect­ed Cred­it Loss­es for the quar­ter end­ing June 30, 2020. We re­main guid­ed by the IFRS 9 stan­dard which will in­form any fur­ther ad­just­ments,” he stat­ed.

The First Cit­i­zens Group said it is con­scious of its wider so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing sup­port to its cus­tomers to as­sist with nav­i­gat­ing through this dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od.

“Thus far, our cus­tomers have ben­e­fit­ed from one or more spe­cial re­lief con­ces­sions that in­clude de­fer­ral of loan pay­ments, waiv­er of fees, re­duc­tion in in­ter­est rates and in­creased ad­vances in cred­it cards,” Smart stat­ed.

“The Group im­ple­ment­ed mea­sures across our op­er­a­tions to re­duce the risk of COVID-19 spread; in­clud­ing the in­stal­la­tion of acrylic safe­ty shields and san­i­ta­tion sta­tions, up­hold­ing phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing guide­lines and en­cour­ag­ing the us­age of dig­i­tal and elec­tron­ic bank­ing chan­nels,” he stat­ed.

The Board de­clared an in­ter­im div­i­dend of 20 cents per or­di­nary share which brings the to­tal in­ter­im div­i­dend for the nine-month pe­ri­od to 92 cents per share.

The to­tal in­ter­im div­i­dend for the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year was $1.21.

The div­i­dend will be paid on Au­gust 28 to share­hold­ers on record as at Au­gust 13.