Brookline Bancorp boosted its first-quarter profits by 9.4 percent year-over-year, but it fielded questions about its taxi medallion portfolio on a quarterly earnings call.

The holding company for Brookline Bank, Bank Rhode Island and First Ipswich Bank posted net income totaling $12.8 million in the first quarter, compared with $11.7 million for the same period last year. That came out to 18 cents per share, compared with 17 cents per share in the year-ago period. The company’s board of directors also approved a dividend of 9 cents per share to be paid on May 20 to stockholders of record on May 6.

Total assets increased 6.9 percent year-over-year to $6.2 billion, and asset growth was driven largely by growth in loans and leases.

Loans and leases totaled $5.1 billion on March 31, representing an increase of $134.9 million from year-end 2015 and $495.9 million from the first quarter last year. Total commercial loans and leases increased about 13 percent year-over-year to $1.4 billion from $1.2 billion last year. Commercial real estate loans increased 10.6 percent to $2.8 billion, from $2.5 billion last year.

Total deposits increased 7.3 percent year-over-year to $4.4 billion. Total borrowings increased $103.4 million, or about 8 percent, to $1 billion on March 31.

Nonperforming assets increased $11.8 million to $32.5 million, or 0.53 percent of total assets, at the end of the first quarter. During the fourth quarter of last year, nonperforming loans and leases increased $12.6 million to $31.9 million. The company said that most of that was related to the restructuring of taxi medallion loans late last year, and company leadership fielded several questions from investors about its taxi medallion portfolio during Brookline’s quarterly conference call.

“We took substantial allowances in our loan loss reserve last quarter. What happened this quarter is that a small portion of our medallion holders have come in seeking some help,” President and CEO Paul A. Perrault said on the earnings call. “They are experiencing reduced cash flows, so they are looking for some relief. Virtually all of our medallion holders continue to pay. A handful of them have taken somewhat reduced payments.”

Answering another investor’s question on the same topic, Perrault said that in-house staff had estimated many taxi medallion borrowers’ revenues had declined about 20 percent over the past year or two.

But when pressed on the matter, Brookline’s leadership didn’t seem too concerned about the issue.

“This is about half of 1 percent of our portfolio,” CFO Carl M. Carlson said. “It hasn’t been something the regulators have been overly concerned with.”