Financial institutions in Nigeria are becoming competitive. This is clearly evident in their services, customer base, investments and assets, as well as customer deposits.
In a recent analysis by a news platform, the top five banks that have continued to blaze the trail of successful banking in Nigeria are Zenith Bank, United Bank for Africa (UBA), Access Bank, Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO) and Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI).
An analysis of customers’ deposits revealed that ETI emerged top with a customer deposit base of N8.36 trillion in the 2021 financial year. Access bank followed closely with a deposit base of N6.96 trillion. Zenith, UBA and GTCO’s customers’ deposit base stood at N6.47 trillion, N6.36 trillion and N4.01 trillion respectively as at the end of the 2021 financial year.
Apart from the customers’ deposits, the banks’ loan book also jointly grew by 15.4 percent in the 2021 financial year to N16.05 trillion compared to N13.91 trillion. Access bank’s Loans and Advances stood at N4.4 trillion as at December 2021 from N3.6 trillion in 2020 while Non-Performing loans (NPL) ratio stood at 4.0 per cent as at December 2021 as against 4.3 per cent in 2020. With these figures, Access bank had the largest loan book.
Also, ETI had the second-largest loan book with N4.06 trillion while Zenith, UBA and GTCO had N3.35 trillion, N2.68 trillion and N1.8 trillion respectively on their loan books.
For Access bank, its assets base stood at N11.7 trillion as at December 2021, representing a growth of 35 per cent y/y from N8.7 trillion in 2020. The total assets of UBA had also grown to N8.54 trillion in 2021 compared to N7.69 trillion which it had as at December 31, 2020 while GTCO’s asset base stood at N5.43 trillion compared to N4.94 which it had in the comparable year of 2020.
In terms of profit, Zenith bank emerged top, with N244.55 billion profit after tax recorded for the 2021 financial year. This represents a 6.07 per cent increase in profit over N230.56 which it made in 2020.
However, profit was not particularly impressive for GTCO, as the group which had made a N201.43 billion profit in 2020, recorded a lower PAT in 2021 with a declaration of N174.83 billion.
On the other hand, Access Bank made a profit of N160.21 billion, a 51.2 per cent increase in profitability compared to N106.01 billion PAT it declared in 2020.
