Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) an­nounced yes­ter­day that it will start pay­ing div­i­dends on a quar­ter­ly ba­sis, in­stead of twice a year.

The change in its sched­ule of div­i­dend pay­ments starts in its cur­rent fi­nan­cial year, which be­gan on Oc­to­ber 1.

In a no­tice on the web­site of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change, Re­pub­lic said its board of di­rec­tors took the de­ci­sion last Fri­day, Oc­to­ber 13, to change the fre­quen­cy of its div­i­dend pay­ments from se­mi-an­nu­al­ly to quar­ter­ly.

"This change will com­mence in fis­cal 2024," RFHL said in the no­tice, which came from the group's gen­er­al coun­sel/cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Kim­ber­ly Erri­ah-Ali.

RFHL has tra­di­tion­al­ly paid its div­i­dends at the be­gin­ning of De­cem­ber and at the end of May.

In De­cem­ber 2022, the bank­ing group's div­i­dend was $3.45 a share and in May 2023, it paid out $1.10.

For the nine-months end­ed June 30, 2023, RFHL de­clared prof­it af­ter tax of $1.39 bil­lion, 11 per cent more than the $1.25 bil­lion it earned for the first nine months of 2022.

In a news re­lease yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­er ac­tivist, Pe­ter Per­me­ll, con­grat­u­lat­ed the board of di­rec­tors of RFHL for its de­ci­sion to in­crease the fre­quen­cy of div­i­dend pay­ments from se­mi-an­nu­al­ly to quar­ter­ly.

Per­me­ll de­scribed the de­ci­sion as "wel­comed" as he said it is one he has been qui­et­ly ad­vo­cat­ing be­hind the scene.

"No doubt, it will not on­ly as­sist in en­hanc­ing share­hold­er val­ue but it will al­so en­cour­age share­hold­er loy­al­ty in light of the volatil­i­ty cur­rent­ly be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced on the lo­cal stock ex­change.

"And whilst clear­ly all share­hold­ers stand to ben­e­fit, I am per­suad­ed that some of the re­al ben­e­fi­cia­ries of this de­ci­sion will be the new­ly mint­ed RFHL in­di­vid­ual share­hold­ers, many of whom are re­tirees and on­ly hap­pened to join the RFHL share­hold­er fam­i­ly be­cause of the ter­mi­na­tion of the Cli­co In­vest­ment Fund (CIF) which re­sult­ed in thou­sands of them re­ceiv­ing RFHL shares as part pay­ment for their CIF units ear­li­er this year," said Per­me­ll.

He said many of the re­tirees de­pend on the div­i­dend in­come from their hold­ings of Re­pub­lic shares "to help meet their reg­u­lar short term com­mit­ments so that any in­crease in the fre­quen­cy of div­i­dend pay­ments will cer­tain­ly help in smooth­ing out their cash flow over the year and there­fore must be com­mend­ed."

With mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion of $19.28 bil­lion (US$2.84 bil­lion), RFHL is the larges fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean re­gion.