Pres­i­dent of Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd RFHL) Nigel Bap­tiste has an­nounced a prof­it at­trib­ut­able to share­hold­ers of the par­ent com­pa­ny of $543 mil­lion for the six-month pe­ri­od end­ed March 31, a de­cline of $240 mil­lion or 30.6 per cent be­low the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od last year.

In a state­ment the bank said these re­sults re­flect pre­lim­i­nary es­ti­mates of the fi­nan­cial im­pact of the nov­el coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic on the group as a re­sult of in­creased op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es dur­ing the lat­ter half of March 2020 and the set­ting aside of ad­di­tion­al pro­vi­sions of $367.7 mil­lion for the first half of fis­cal 2020 (2019—$134.7 mil­lion) to cov­er po­ten­tial fu­ture loss­es.

Bap­tiste not­ed that to­tal as­sets stood at $98.4 bil­lion at March 31, 2020, an in­crease of $15 bil­lion or 17.9 per cent over the to­tal as­sets at March 31, 2019 re­flect­ing main­ly the ac­qui­si­tion of Sco­tia­bank’s op­er­a­tions in St. Maarten and the East­ern Caribbean (ex­cept An­tigua and Bar­bu­da) on No­vem­ber 1, 2019 which added $12.7 bil­lion to the Group’s as­set base.

The ac­qui­si­tion of Sco­tia­bank’s bank­ing op­er­a­tions in the British Vir­gin Is­lands re­mains on­go­ing, with the group present­ly en­gaged with the reg­u­la­tor in that ter­ri­to­ry to ob­tain the req­ui­site ap­proval.

“Cog­nisant of our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to help our clients, staff, and com­mu­ni­ties nav­i­gate these unique chal­lenges, the Group in­sti­tut­ed sev­er­al mea­sures, in­clud­ing loan pay­ment mora­to­ri­ums, waiv­er of fees and charges, and in­ter­est rate re­duc­tions on loans and ad­vances in­clud­ing cred­it cards.

“The group has al­so con­tributed a to­tal of US$2 mil­lion to na­tion­al COVID-19 ini­tia­tives across the ter­ri­to­ries in which we op­er­ate,” Bap­tiste said.

Stress­ing the im­por­tance of a pru­dent ap­proach giv­en the many un­cer­tain­ties as a re­sult of the cur­rent pan­dem­ic, Bap­tiste added that notwith­stand­ing the pub­lic health mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed to date, there is un­cer­tain­ty glob­al­ly in re­spect of the in­ten­si­ty and du­ra­tion of this cri­sis.

“It is un­clear what the so­cial, eco­nom­ic and mar­ket con­di­tions will be like once the cri­sis is over.

“Pru­dence re­quires there­fore, that fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions adopt a de­fen­sive pos­ture to pre­serve the sta­bil­i­ty of in­di­vid­ual in­sti­tu­tions and the in­tegri­ty of the over­all fi­nan­cial sys­tem,” Bap­tiste said.

There­fore, he not­ed that un­til the full reper­cus­sions are clear­er, and to pre­serve the cap­i­tal avail­able to the Group, the Board of di­rec­tors has de­clared a re­duced in­ter­im div­i­dend of $0.60 (2019: $1.25) per share payable on June 5, 2020.

“Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings is well-placed to make a ma­jor con­tri­bu­tion to the re­gion­al re­cov­ery ef­fort and is ful­ly com­mit­ted to do­ing so.

“We will seek to bal­ance the in­ter­ests of all our stake­hold­ers as we all shoul­der the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of restor­ing sus­tain­able growth to the ter­ri­to­ries in which we op­er­ate,” Bap­tiste added.