Ten of the largest quoted commercial banks in Nigeria incurred a total of about N6.1 billion in executive compensation for the financial year ended December 2016. This represents a 17% drop from the N7.4 billion expensed in the same period in 2015.
The banks in view are Access Bank, UBA, Diamond Bank, GT Bank, Zenith Bank, Fidelity Bank, Union Bank, FBNH, FCMB and Stanbic IBTC
This data was obtained from the annual report of these banks. See chart,
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Executive compensation
- FBNH, the holding company of  First Bank incurred a huge chunk of the total executive compensation with about N1.4 billion in 2016.
- FBNH is a holding company that includes First Bank, FBN Insurance, FBN Capital among other financial services businesses. This perhaps accounts for its significant quantum of its executive compensation.
- Union Bank is next with about N763 million for the year ended 2016. Union Bank was sold by AMCON to Atlas Mara, a foreign entity a few years back. The bank is undergoing a restructuring and as such must have paid heavily to attract high profile executives.
- Of the big 5 banks, Zenith comes last with about N403 million as executive compensation.
- Surprisingly, Diamond Bank had the least amount spent on executive compensation with just N88 million reported for the year.
- Stanbic IBTC reported a 36% drop in its executive compensation, from about N800 million in 2015 to N515 million in 2016.
- Fidelity Bank also reported a 21% year on year drop in executive compensation to N273 million.
- FCMB on the other hand, increased its executive compensation by 7.5% to N574 million
- UBA reported the highest increase in executive compensation to N645 million, representing an 18% rise.
Highest paid directors
Companies typically disclose the highest paid directors in the annual report, which mostly represents the emoluments paid to MD/CEO’s. The ten banks in view paid a total of N1 billion in 2016 about the same amount paid in 2015.
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- The year 2016 shows GT Bank CEO, Segun Agbaje, was paid the highest salary with about N204 million annually. He also topped the list in 2015 with about N205 million paid.
- Union Bank CEO, Emeka Emuwa, who was poached from Citi Bank, was paid N166 million in 2016
- Zenith Bank and Access Bank, which both form the quintet of largest banks in Nigeria paid about N88 million and N85 million respectively.
- Diamond Bank CEO is paid the least with about N34 million as emoluments. He also got the highest bump in salary with a 33% increase year on year.
- FBNH increased its CEO’s pay by about 16.7% to N105 million
The ten banks in view incurred a total of N442 billion in personnel cost compared to N412 billion in 2015. This represents an increase of about 7.3% year on year. The banks under review also reported a gross earnings of about N3 trillion.
This is one of reasons I love a job in the banking sector. They always seem to have good cash