RBC Fi­nan­cial (Caribbean) Ltd, the hold­ing com­pa­ny for the Cana­di­an bank in the re­gion, re­port­ed $1.16 bil­lion in net in­come af­ter tax­a­tion for its fi­nan­cial year end­ed Oc­to­ber 31, 2024. That is an in­crease of 8.48 per cent com­pared with the $1.07 bil­lion the bank earned in its 2023 fi­nan­cial year.

RBC Fi­nan­cial’s au­dit­ed re­sults for 2024 were pub­lished as a news­pa­per sup­ple­ment yes­ter­day.

The board of di­rec­tors of the bank au­tho­rised the con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments for is­sue on Jan­u­ary 23, 2025. The com­pa­ny op­er­ates in ten coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries in the Caribbean, com­pris­ing Aru­ba, Ba­hamas, Bar­ba­dos, Bonaire, Cay­man, Cu­raçao, Sa­ba, St Maarten, Trinidad and To­ba­go, and Turks and Caicos.

RBC Fi­nan­cial’s rev­enue grew by $177.64 mil­lion, or 5.61 per cent, to $3.34 bil­lion at the end of Oc­to­ber 2024.

Dar­ryl White, the CEO of RBC Fi­nan­cial, in his re­port on the con­sol­i­dat­ed fi­nan­cials, said the high­er rev­enue was “dri­ven by high­er in­ter­est rates on the se­cu­ri­ties port­fo­lio, high­er loan vol­umes across the re­gion with fee in­come rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble.”

He said, “With the strong rev­enue growth and rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble ex­pense pro­file, the ef­fi­cien­cy pro­file im­proved to 57.7 per cent from 60.9 per cent in the pri­or year.”

The bank’s to­tal as­sets de­clined by 3.73 per cent to $63.59 bil­lion, as a re­sult of “man­age­ment’s ac­tions to re­pay an in­tra­group fund­ing line of $2.8 bil­lion and a share cap­i­tal repa­tri­a­tion of $1.3 bil­lion,” said White.

The fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion’s re­tained earn­ings more than tripled, in­creas­ing from $533.38 mil­lion in 2023 to $1.62 bil­lion in 2024.

The bank paid no div­i­dends to its im­me­di­ate par­ent com­pa­ny, RBC Hold­ings (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd, in ei­ther 2023 or 2024.

The bank ex­ec­u­tive said notwith­stand­ing the share cap­i­tal repa­tri­a­tion, RBC Fi­nan­cial’s reg­u­la­to­ry cap­i­tal ra­tio at year end was 26.59 per cent, com­pared to 27.30 per cent in fis­cal 2023, said the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion.

Mean­while, RBC Roy­al Bank (Trinidad and To­ba­go) Ltd, which is the T&T sub­sidiary of RBC Fi­nan­cial (Caribbean), de­clared $326.47 mil­lion net in­come for the fi­nan­cial year end­ed Oc­to­ber 31, 2024, which was an in­crease of 18.07 per cent com­pared to the 2023 fi­nan­cial year.