First Citizens CEO resigns effective August 31

An­tho­ny Wil­son

Con­sul­tant Busi­ness Ed­i­tor

an­tho­ny.wil­[email protected]

Af­ter nine months and nine days as the group CEO of T&T’s sec­ond-largest bank, First Cit­i­zens Group Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings, Ja­son Julien con­firmed last night that he had re­signed from the po­si­tion and will leave the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned bank at the end of this month.

In ac­cor­dance with the terms of his em­ploy­ment, his res­ig­na­tion be­comes ef­fec­tive on Au­gust 31, 2026.

He told Guardian Me­dia, how­ev­er, that he “def­i­nite­ly was not forced out” of First Cit­i­zens and chose to re­sign be­cause he was “pre­sent­ed with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to work for a US com­pa­ny list­ed on the Nas­daq (Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Se­cu­ri­ties Deal­ers Au­to­mat­ed Quo­ta­tions), which pro­vid­ed scope to con­tribute to a wider Caribbean team.”

The Nas­daq is a stock mar­ket in the US that is heav­i­ly dom­i­nat­ed by tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies, but al­so in­cludes thou­sands of firms from oth­er in­dus­tries. But Julien said he will be in Trinidad.

He said the com­pa­ny he is head­ing to is not in the fi­nan­cial sec­tor and is not a com­peti­tor of any of the lo­cal com­mer­cial banks.

He said the forth­com­ing job presents “an ex­cit­ing new pro­fes­sion­al chal­lenge and the be­gin­ning of an­oth­er chap­ter in my ca­reer.”

Julien, who is 50, be­came the group CEO of First Cit­i­zens on Oc­to­ber 22, 2025, fol­low­ing the de­par­ture of his pre­de­ces­sor, Karen Dar­basie, who re­tired on Oc­to­ber 21, 2025.

Julien was pro­mot­ed to deputy CEO ef­fec­tive Feb­ru­ary 1, 2015, hav­ing served pre­vi­ous­ly as gen­er­al man­ag­er of First Cit­i­zens In­vest­ment Ser­vices (FCIS) for five years.

He worked at Guardian Hold­ings, Citibank and Price­Wa­ter­house­C­oop­ers be­fore head­ing to First Cit­i­zens.

In his res­ig­na­tion let­ter, which is dat­ed Ju­ly 31, Julien de­scribed the de­ci­sion to leave as “dif­fi­cult,” and one that had not been made light­ly.

“Hav­ing ded­i­cat­ed 16 years of my ca­reer to First Cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing the past 11 years as a mem­ber of the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship team, this in­sti­tu­tion has be­come far more than just my place of work. It has shaped my pro­fes­sion­al jour­ney, chal­lenged me to grow as a leader, and giv­en me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work along­side ex­cep­tion­al peo­ple in pur­suit of a shared pur­pose,” Julien said in the let­ter to the bank’s chair­man Shankar Bidaisee and its board of di­rec­tors.

In the let­ter, he told the bank’s board that while he now looks for­ward to a new pro­fes­sion­al chap­ter, “I do so with im­mense grat­i­tude for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have led this re­mark­able or­gan­i­sa­tion and to have served along­side an out­stand­ing board of di­rec­tors whose wis­dom, stew­ard­ship and un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to sound gov­er­nance have pro­found­ly in­flu­enced my own growth and de­vel­op­ment.”

He ex­pressed his deep­est ap­pre­ci­a­tion to Bidaisee and the en­tire board.

“I have been for­tu­nate to learn from your col­lec­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, in­sight and judge­ment. Your coun­sel, chal­lenge and en­cour­age­ment have made me a bet­ter ex­ec­u­tive, a bet­ter leader and, in­deed, a bet­ter per­son.”

He al­so ex­pressed his heart­felt ap­pre­ci­a­tion to his col­leagues through­out the group.

“It has been an ho­n­our to work along­side ex­cep­tion­al­ly tal­ent­ed, ded­i­cat­ed and val­ues-dri­ven pro­fes­sion­als whose com­mit­ment to ex­cel­lence has es­tab­lished First Cit­i­zens as one of the Caribbean’s pre­mier fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions. What­ev­er suc­cess­es we have achieved have al­ways been the prod­uct of col­lec­tive lead­er­ship, team­work and a shared com­mit­ment to liv­ing our EPIC Val­ues,” Julien said.

He said over the com­ing weeks, he will re­main ful­ly com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing a seam­less and pro­fes­sion­al tran­si­tion and that he would work “close­ly with the board of di­rec­tors and se­nior man­age­ment to pro­vide the nec­es­sary sup­port to fa­cil­i­tate con­ti­nu­ity and po­si­tion the or­gan­i­sa­tion for con­tin­ued suc­cess.”