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Patrick Kelechi

 

Daily Courier – First Bank of Nigeria Limited, a commercial banking subsidiary of FBN Holdings Plc has reported a profit after tax of N117.8 billion, up 73.9 percent year-on-year from N67.8 billion posted in 2020. Profit before tax was N130.9 billion, up 77.9 percent year-on-year from N73.6 billion reported in 2020.

Non-interest income grew by 106.4 percent to N342.2 billion from N165.8 billion on the back of increased fees and commission income, treasury activities and other operating income.

The bank reported gross earnings of N716.8 billion, up 30.3 per cent y-o-y from N550.3 billion posted in 2020.

Commenting on the results, the Chief Executive Officer of FirstBank Group, Dr. Adesola Adeduntan, said: “Following years of strategic restructuring of the Bank’s balance sheet and operations, the Commercial Banking business is beginning to transition into a sustained growth phase delivering performance commensurate to the size of our business and capabilities of our people.

“Profit before tax is up 77.9 per cent, gross earnings 30.3 per cent, total assets 15.9 per cent and customer deposits up 19.5 per cent.

“This performance was driven by a relentless focus on the needs of customers and improving the competitiveness of our offerings. We have sharpened our ‘Go To Market’ approach to better leverage the opportunities which our large scale provides in addition to becoming more relevant to our clients by improving our value propositions.

“This performance is also in line with the Bank’s Quantum Profitability Leap agenda which seeks to ensure that we fully maximise the revenue-generating capacity of our business to boost the bottom line and fulfil the expectations of all stakeholders in the business.

“The demonstrated resilience of our franchise to headwinds and excellent risk management capabilities place us in a good position to weather any macro-economic shocks which may arise due to the volatile nature of the current operating environment. Our Non-performing loans ratio at the end of the year was 6.1 per cent which represents significant progress towards those of other Tier 1 banks and the regulatory threshold of 5.0 per cent

“We will continue to leverage our investments in digital platforms, IT infrastructure, people, and pan-African operations to ensure this growth trend is sustained”.

Operating expenses was ₦313.9 billion, up 14.3 percent year-on-year from ₦274.6 billion in 2020, while Total assets of ₦8.5 trillion, a rise of 15.9 percent year-on-year from ₦7.4 trillion in 2020

The result further revealed that Customers’ loans and advances (net) rose by 27.7 percent to ₦2.8 trillion, year-on-year as against ₦2.2 trillion in 2020 as Customers’ deposits jumped to ₦5.6 trillion from ₦4.7 trillion in 2020, reflecting a 19.5 percent rise year-on-year.