DUBAI: First Abu Dhabi Bank, the UAE’s biggest lender, reported a 7% rise in 2022 net profit on Thursday despite its fourth-quarter profit falling 26% from a year earlier.

FAB posted 13.4 billion dirhams ($3.65 billion) in net profit for the full year, up from 12.5 billion dirhams in 2021.

Fourth-quarter net profit was nearly 2.5 billion dirhams, down from 3.3 billion dirhams from a year earlier. FAB missed analyst estimates of 2.95 billion dirhams in fourth-quarter net profit, according to Refinitiv data.

Chief Executive Hana Al Rostamani said the full-year net profit was “a historic high for our bank.” “Strong business volumes have underlined healthy pipeline execution across our diversified business model,” she said, adding that FAB continued to consolidate its presence in priority markets, including in Egypt through FABMisr.

FAB said fourth-quarter net profit was lower than the previous quarter due to “prudent provisioning and conservative asset valuations.”

Net impairment charges for the year were at 2.8 billion dirhams, up 7% from 2021, including 1.1 billion dirhams in the fourth quarter. FAB’s board recommended cash dividend of 0.52 dirhams per share.

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Separately on Thursday, FAB said it has appointed Lars Kramer as group chief financial officer, reporting directly to Al Rostamani. Kramer joins FAB from Netherlands-based ABN AMRO, where he has been CFO since June 2021. Karim Karoui, FAB’s group head of mergers and acquisitions, will be interim GCFO and will transition to Kramer when he joins FAB in the second quarter.

FAB had said in October that outgoing CFO James Burdett would retire and remain in place until a successor is appointed.