Citizens bank reports loss in 2010

With their headquarters installed in Rhode Island, Citizens Financial Group, also known as Citizens Bank, has recently released a statement in which they announce loss of money, comparing to last years’ same period. According to numbers provided by the company itself, Citizens Bank lost $3.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2010, which came up to $8.2 million when added with the losses of the rest of the year.

Drastic Loss Of Money

The bank had been reporting the situation to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. since the first quarter of 2010. The representatives explained that the main reason for having lost that amount of money was because of the bank’s investment on loan loss reserves at that same period.

At the same time, the total of cash that was redirected to paying bad debts was of $12.4 million and still put another $12.4 in reserves. During the same first quarter of 2010, Citizens Bank had already used $1.5 million in bad debt. After all of the procedures the bank had to go through, the company released that the final value of their assets was of $312 million, which is referred to the beginning of this year.

Changes On The Way Things Work

The statement released by the Citizens Bank president, Gary Gall, as a way of explaining the situation, said “Throughout 2010 our country, state and the communities we serve continued to experience wide-spread economic difficulties including the continuing decline in real estate market values, local and regional unemployment, a deeper strain on small businesses and a surge in oil prices.”

Besides the economical difficulties, Citizens Bank decided to charge clients who receive monthly statements at home $2 per month. Although the strategy is supposed to be a consequence of internet banking, Duquesne University Professor, Tom Nist, said “To do electronic banking, you have got to have access to electronics and while that number is moving northward very rapidly across our society, there are still a lot of people who opt out of electronic banking or are just not inclined to do that. The older generations are still not comfortable with that and probably never will be.”