Fidelity Bank Plc has announced its unaudited financial results, for the nine months period ended 30 September 2016, showing significant growth in the Bank’s deposit to N795.6 billion.
This represents a 3.4 percent increase from N769.6 billion recorded in the corresponding period of 2015 Financial Year (FY).
According to the lender, which is one of the nation’s highly diversified financial institutions the devaluation of the Naira accounted for N53.6 billion of its deposit growth.
This result was contained in a statement issued by the Bank and made available in Lagos yesterday. The Bank’s gross earnings also rose to N110.3 billion from N107 billion, representing a growth of 3.0 percent in the period under review.
The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Bank, Nnamdi Okonkwo, who commented on the result, pointed out that the Bank’s performance was indeed reflective of the recessionary environment characterised by lower government revenues, rising inflation, lower consumer disposable income, significantly tougher operating environment in all sectors and the impact of these headwinds on asset quality and foreign trade transactions.
He said: “We continued with the disciplined execution of our medium term strategy and recorded decent growth on some key operational metrics while moderating the impact of the headwinds above on other financial indices.”
The unaudited financial statement also stated that Profit before Tax (PBT) decreased by 28.7 percent to N9.8 billion from N13.8 billion in the period under review.
Giving cogent explanations for the relatively poor performance in this regard, the Fidelity helmsman noted that PBT declined largely due to “a 102.0 percent Year-on-Year (YoY) growth in impairment charge (N4.0bn) driven significantly by increased provisions made in the second quarter (Q2) and third quarter (Q3) of 2016 (N4.1 billion and N3.2 billion respectively) due to the impact of the devaluation of the local currency (naira) on our trade finance portfolio and some critical sectors affected by the weaker macroeconomic indices.”
He added that a 95.7 percent YoY (N1.3bn) decline in dividend income on equity investments as well as a 8.9 percent YoY growth in operating expense were also responsible for the decline in profit.
