First­Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank has record­ed in­creased in­come for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed Oc­to­ber 31, 2023.

In com­pa­ny's sum­ma­ry con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for the year the Bank re­port­ed net in­come of US$269.9 mil­lion, up US$93.5 mil­lion or 53 per cent, from pri­or year’s net in­come of US$176.4 mil­lion.

Ad­just­ed net in­come was US$267.0 mil­lion, af­ter ex­clud­ing net gains ofUS $2.9 mil­lion re­lat­ed to the pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced di­vesti­tures, com­pared with ad­just­ed net in­come of US$186.9 mil­lion at the end of 2022.

First­Caribbean said: "The year’s sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved re­sults were large­ly due to the rev­enue up­lift from high­er US bench­mark in­ter­est rates in our pri­ma­ry US-dol­lar de­nom­i­nat­ed op­er­at­ing com­pa­nies in the Ba­hamas and the Cay­man Is­lands.

"Ad­di­tion­al­ly, as the re­gion­al econ­o­my con­tin­ued to re­cov­er from the af­ter­math of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, trans­ac­tion-based op­er­at­ing in­come re­turned to nor­malised lev­els, im­prov­ing over the pri­or year."

The re­port stat­ed while the high in­ter­est rate en­vi­ron­ment has im­proved mar­gins in 2023, loan growth has been mod­er­ate in line with cost­lier debt and clients’ debt man­age­ment strate­gies.

De­posit growth has al­so slowed, as some client in­flows have been di­rect­ed to­wards al­ter­nate in­vest­ment prod­ucts or debt re­pay­ment. In 2024, a soft­er pace for eco­nom­ic growth and sus­tained in­fla­tion lev­els are like­ly to have broad im­pli­ca­tions across our strate­gic busi­ness units.

The re­port con­tin­ued, "How­ev­er, even with some flu­id­i­ty in the eco­nom­ic out­look, we are con­fi­dent we can build on our mo­men­tum and dri­ve strate­gic long-term growth, Non-in­ter­est ex­pens­es were up over the pri­or year as we ex­pe­ri­enced high­er em­ploy­ee-re­lat­ed costs, high­er ex­pens­es re­lat­ed to our strate­gic in­vest­ments and oth­er ex­pens­es im­pact­ed by in­fla­tion and busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty. The pro­vi­sion for cred­it loss­es was up slight­ly from the pri­or year large­ly due to up­dat­ed, less favourable for­ward-look­ing eco­nom­ic in­di­ca­tors, off­set by low­er pro­vi­sion for cred­it loss­es on our im­paired port­fo­lio."

The Board of Di­rec­tors ap­proved a quar­ter­ly div­i­dend of US$0.0125 per share, bring­ing the to­tal div­i­dend to US$0.0475 per share for the year demon­strat­ing the Bank’s strong fi­nan­cial po­si­tion and com­mit­ment to share­hold­er re­turn. The div­i­dend will be paid on Jan­u­ary 18, 2024, to share­hold­ers of record on De­cem­ber 18, 2023.

On Oc­to­ber 31, 2023, First­Caribbean an­nounced the fi­nal two di­ves­tures in its pro­gram of stream­lin­ing its busi­ness across the re­gion with the sale of its bank­ing as­sets in Cu­ra­cao and St. Maarten to Cu­ra­cao-based, Or­Co Bank N.V, sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval and oth­er clos­ing con­di­tions and are ex­pect­ed to close dur­ing fis­cal 2024.

Cana­di­an fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion, CIBC, owns 91.7 per cent of First­Caribbean, which is list­ed on the stock ex­changes of T&T and Bar­ba­dos.