First Bank of Nigeria Limited, a commercial banking subsidiary of FBN Holdings Plc has reported a profit after tax of ₦117.8 billion, up 73.9% y-o-y from ₦67.8 billion posted in 2020.
Profit before tax was ₦130.9 billion, up 77.9% y-o-y from ₦73.6 billion reported in 2020.
Non-interest income grew by 106.4% to ₦342.2 billion from ₦165.8 billion on the back of increased fees and commission income, treasury activities and other operating income.
The bank reported gross earnings of ₦716.8 billion, up 30.3% y-o-y from ₦550.3 billion posted in 2020.
What the bank is saying
Commenting on the results, Dr. Adesola Adeduntan, Chief Executive Officer of FirstBank Group 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%, gross earnings 30.3%, total assets 15.9% and customer deposits up 19.5%.
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 current operating environment. Our Non-performing loans ratio at the end of the year was 6.1% which represents significant progress towards those of other Tier 1 banks and the regulatory threshold of 5.0%.
We will continue to leverage our investments in digital platforms, IT infrastructure, people, and pan-African operations to ensure this growth trend is sustained”.
Other earnings highlights
- Operating expenses of ₦313.9 billion, up 14.3% y-o-y from ₦274.6 billion in 2020
- Total assets of ₦8.5 trillion, up 15.9% y-o-y from ₦7.4 trillion in 2020
- Customers’ loans and advances (net) of ₦2.8 trillion, up 27.7% y-o-y as against ₦2.2 trillion in 2020
- Customers’ deposits of ₦5.6 trillion, up 19.5% y-o-y as against ₦4.7 trillion in 2020
