With quarterly earnings up 8 percent compared to a year ago, Century Bank has increased its shareholder dividend for the second time this year, after more than 15 years without an increase.

The board of directors voted to increase the regular quarterly dividend from $0.14 per share to $0.16 per share on class A common stock and from $0.07 per share to $0.08 per share on class B common stock. Last quarter the board had also increased the dividend by $0.02, the first increase since 2003, according to Century Bank’s second-quarter earnings statement.

Century Bank had third quarter net income of about $10.89 million, or $1.96 per class A share diluted, compared to net income of $10.08 million, or $1.81 per class A share diluted, for the third quarter of 2019.

Year-to-date net income through Sept. 30 was $30.61 million, or $5.50 per class A share diluted, a 5.7 percent increase compared to the same period in 2019, when net income was $28.97 million, or $5.20 per class A share diluted.

The Medford-based bank is also now a $6 billion-asset bank, with total assets increasing to $6.3 billion from $5.95 billion on June 30 and $5.49 billion on Dec. 31.

Falling rates on interest-bearing accounts has helped Century Bank’s interest income grow by 11.2 percent during the first nine months of 2020. Net interest income totaled $78.4 million year-to-date through Sept. 30 compared to $70.5 million for the same period last year. The collection of prepayment penalties has also increased to approximately $946,000 for the first nine months of 2020 compared to $18,000 for the same period last year.

Lower rates, however, also continued to affect margin pressure. The net interest margin decreased from 2.08 percent in the first nine months of 2019 to 2.01 year-to-date in 2020.

Century Bank has $5.4 billion in deposits, up from $4.4 billion at the end of 2019, and $2.9 billion in loans, compared to $2.4 billion on Dec. 31.

Economic uncertainties from the pandemic continued to affect the provision for loan losses, which increased from $700,000 in the first nine months of 2019 to $3.675 million for the same period in 2020. Century’s allowance for loan losses was $33.4 million, or 1.12 percent of loans, on Sept. 30 compared to $29.6 million, or 1.22 percent of loans, on Dec. 31 and $29.1 million, or 1.22 percent of loans, on Sept. 30, 2019.

The ratio has gone down in 2020 primarily because Paycheck Protection Program loans do not require an allowance for loan losses, the bank said in its third-quarter earnings statement. Century had approximately $232 million of PPP loans.

Century has COVID-19-related modifications on 33 loans aggregating almost $38 million. Most of these modifications consisted of short-term payment deferrals, and the bank said all of these loans were performing according to the modified terms.