FY’22: Tier-2 Banks’ Customer Deposits Rise 20.07% To N8.60trn

FY’22: Tier-2 Banks’ Customer Deposits Rise 20.07% To N8.60trn

Six tier-2 deposit money banks in the country grew their customer deposits by N1.44trillion (20.07 per cent) to N8.60trillion last year, from N7.16trillion in 2021, according to the lenders’ unaudited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2022.

The lenders are First City Monument Bank (FCMB), Fidelity Bank, Stanbic IBTC, Sterling Bank, Wema Bank and Unity Bank. Our correspondent's analysis of the unaudited financial statements recently released by the six DMBs indicates that all but one of them crossed the N1trillion mark in terms of customer deposits.

A breakdown of the results shows that Fidelity Bank’s customer deposits rose to N2.59 trillion last year compared with N2.02 trillion in 2021. It was followed by FCMB, which grew its customer deposits to N1.95 trillion in 2022, from N1.55 trillion in the preceding year.

Also, Sterling Bank reported customer deposits of  N1.33 trillion for last year, compared with N1.21 trillion it raked in in 2021. Similarly, Stanbic IBTC’s customer deposits increased to N1.24 trillion in 2022, compared with N1.13 trillion in the preceding  year.Wema Bank’s customer deposits also headed north last year, rising to N1.17trillion from N927.47billion in 2021.

Unity Bank reported customer deposits of N327.43billion in 2022 as against the N322.28billion that the lender reported in the preceding year. Analysts note that competition for customer deposits in the financial sector, which has intensified in recent years, especially with the advent of digital banks that charge customers minimal or zero fees and com  mission coupled with the Covid-19-induced surge in e-payments growth, made DMBs to begin to deploy mobile apps, internet banking, agency banking, business strategies and other traditional forms of marketing, to rake in deposits.

Indeed, a recent report named Nigeria’s Africa’s digital payments leader and the country’s banking sector as the most digitised on the continent.

According to the report, Nigeria recorded 3.7 billion real-time payments in 2021, earning the country sixth spot among nations with the biggest real-time payments markets. Also, latest data released by the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) shows that mobile transactions rose by 125 per cent to N2.37 trillion in January 2023, compared with the preceding month.

The data further indicates that the volume of mobile transactions increased by 55per cent to 108.1 million, compared to 32.6 million transactions in January 2022. In addition, the data shows that Point of Sale (PoS) transactions increased by 41per cent to N807.16 billion in January this year, compared with N573.7 billion in the corresponding period last year.

Analysts predict that the 31 December 2022 audited financial statements of Nigeria’s Tier 1 lenders (Zenith Bank, Access Bank, UBA, GTB and FirstBank)-likely to be released in the next few weeks- will indicate even more impressive growth in terms of customer deposits.

It was reported that in its Financial Stability Report(FSR) for the first half of 2022, released in December, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) stated that the five lenders, which it designates as Domestic Systemically Important Banks (D-SIBs), held N25.41 trillion (60.45 per cent) of total industry deposits of N42.03 trillion as of H1’ 2022 and accounted for N15.22 trillion (56.25 per cent) of the aggregate industry credit of N27.06 trillion.

The report also showed that the five lenders accounted for N37.73 trillion (57.62 per cent) of the industry’s total assets of N65.48 trillion as at the end of June last year.