Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd (RFHL) yes­ter­day an­nounced the ap­point­ment of Richard S. Sam­my as group pres­i­dent and CEO of the fi­nan­cial ser­vices group and pres­i­dent and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd, with ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027.

The dis­clo­sure was pub­lished on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change web­site yes­ter­day and signed by group gen­er­al coun­sel and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary Kim­ber­ly Erri­ah-Ali. The no­tice was dat­ed Jan­u­ary 30, 2026.

Sam­my will re­place Nigel Bap­tiste, who has held the po­si­tion of pres­i­dent of RFHL and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed since 2016.

Sam­my is cur­rent­ly group vice pres­i­dent at Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Lim­it­ed, a po­si­tion he has held since No­vem­ber 2022. In that role, he has re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for strate­gic over­sight across the group’s re­gion­al op­er­a­tions and sub­sidiaries.

Be­fore join­ing the RFHL ex­ec­u­tive team, Sam­my served as gen­er­al man­ag­er for cor­po­rate and in­vest­ment bank­ing at Re­pub­lic Bank from Sep­tem­ber 2019 to No­vem­ber 2022. His re­mit in­clud­ed large cor­po­rate clients, struc­tured fi­nance and in­vest­ment bank­ing ac­tiv­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He al­so has se­nior man­age­ment ex­pe­ri­ence with­in the group’s in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tions. From April 2015 to Ju­ly 2019, Sam­my was man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Bank (Guyana) Ltd, where he led the in­sti­tu­tion dur­ing a pe­ri­od of busi­ness growth in that mar­ket.

Ear­li­er, Sam­my held sev­er­al se­nior roles at Re­pub­lic Bank Ltd in T&T. Be­tween Jan­u­ary 2014 and March 2015, he served as re­gion­al man­ag­er for the cor­po­rate busi­ness cen­tre, South. Pri­or to that, from March 2009 to De­cem­ber 2013, he was re­gion­al man­ag­er of the in­vest­ment bank­ing di­vi­sion, with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for cor­po­rate fi­nance and ad­vi­so­ry ser­vices.

His ca­reer in fi­nan­cial ser­vices al­so in­cludes time at Sagi­cor Mer­chant, where he worked as se­nior man­ag­er for busi­ness de­vel­op­ment be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2005 and Feb­ru­ary 2009.

Yes­ter­day, RFHL re­port­ed that prof­it at­trib­ut­able to its eq­ui­ty hold­ers of $595.7 mil­lion for the three months end­ed De­cem­ber 31, 2025, re­flect­ing an in­crease of $48.7 mil­lion or 8.9 per cent com­pared with the $547 mil­lion re­port­ed in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od of the pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial year.

The re­sults were an­nounced by new RFHL chair­man Yash­mid Kara­math, who said the group’s per­for­mance for the first quar­ter was sup­port­ed by steady core earn­ings, sta­ble as­set qual­i­ty, and dis­ci­plined cost man­age­ment.

To­tal as­sets stood at $131.1 bil­lion at the end of De­cem­ber 2025, rep­re­sent­ing an in­crease of $7.5 bil­lion or 6.0 per cent over the $123.6 bil­lion record­ed at De­cem­ber 2024. RFHL said the growth in as­sets was large­ly dri­ven by in­creased lend­ing ac­tiv­i­ty across its sub­sidiaries, de­spite on­go­ing eco­nom­ic chal­lenges in some of the mar­kets in which the group op­er­ates.