FCB declares $817M in profits

The company announced its results at its Annual General Meeting held at the Hilton Trinidad and Conference Centre. Darbasie also announced that the bank’s total assets had increased from $37.5 billion to $38.9 billion and its capital base increased by more than 5.6 per cent from $6.3 billion to $6.7 billion.

Darbasie began her presentation to the meeting not with the hard numbers but by talking about the bank’s contribution to its customers and various interest groups. She said First Citizens is constantly upgrading its ATM network to provide better security and protection for its customers.

She also spoke about the bank’s consistent monitoring of customer transactions to spot and highlight suspicious transactions, and said First Citizens had introduced profit sharing for its employees.

She said while the benefits to employees were clear, it also benefitted shareholders by aligning compensation to maximise profit which benefitted the shareholders. She said that the just concluded Additional Public Offering allowed the bank to invest in the first Employee Stock Ownership Plan available for a majority State-owned company which ensured that employees’ compensation and retirement benefits were linked to the performance of the share price and as the share price performance improved it benefitted the shareholders.

She added that the bank works on staff creativity and camaraderie through staff conventions and other employee initiatives while it also gave back to communities through its corporate social responsibility programme which she said is built around women’s issues.