Just one day be­fore the Re­pub­lic Bank was set to in­tro­duce in­creased bank­ing fees for cus­tomers Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed (RFHL), an­nounced prof­its at­trib­ut­able to its eq­ui­ty hold­ers of $1.07 bil­lion for the first half of the 2026 fi­nan­cial year.

In a re­lease on Thurs­day, Yash­mid Kara­math, Chair­man of RFHL stat­ed this was an in­crease of $54 mil­lion or 5.4 per cent over the $1.01 bil­lion record­ed in the same pe­ri­od of the pri­or year.

Kara­math said, “De­spite this pos­i­tive mo­men­tum, the op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment across our mar­kets re­mained chal­leng­ing. Geo-po­lit­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty, eco­nom­ic head­winds, in­fla­tion­ary pres­sures, tighter liq­uid­i­ty con­di­tions, and un­even growth tra­jec­to­ries have im­pact­ed gov­ern­ment, con­sumer and cor­po­rate ac­tiv­i­ty across the coun­tries in which we op­er­ate. These fac­tors have re­quired care­ful nav­i­ga­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in man­ag­ing cred­it risk and main­tain­ing pru­dent cap­i­tal and liq­uid­i­ty po­si­tions, while the Group’s di­ver­si­fied port­fo­lio pro­vide in­her­ent coun­ter­weights.”

Kara­math added, “We al­so con­tin­ue to en­hance our risk man­age­ment frame­works, op­ti­mise our cost base, and in­vest in dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence.”

He said furhter, “Look­ing ahead, we are mind­ful that the geo-po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ments will re­main un­pre­dictable in the short term. How­ev­er, the Group re­mains well-po­si­tioned to nav­i­gate these un­cer­tain­ties. Our strong cap­i­tal base, ro­bust gov­er­nance, and clear strate­gic di­rec­tion pro­vide a sol­id foun­da­tion for sus­tain­able growth. The Group re­mains com­mit­ted to de­liv­er­ing long-term val­ue to share­hold­ers while sup­port­ing the com­mu­ni­ties and economies in which we op­er­ate.”

Based on the re­sults, the board of di­rec­tors has de­clared a quar­ter­ly in­ter­im div­i­dend of $0.60 per share, which is the same as the pri­or year, payable on May 28, 2026, to share­hold­ers on record as of May 15, 2026.