Zenith Bank PLC has been named bank of the Year Nigeria by the Banker, a publication of Financial Times of London. In a statement on its website the Banker said “Zenith has come a long way since it was founded in 1990. The bank, which had $17bn of assets at the end of 2012, is the largest in Nigeria based on Tier 1 capital, according to The Banker’s latest Top 1000 rankings. By the same measure, it is the sixth biggest lender in the whole of Africa.
“Zenith’s performance in the past two years has been particularly strong. One of the banks to come through Nigeria’s 2009 financial crisis relatively unscathed, it made a record pre-tax profit in 2012 of N102 billion ($651m). This year looks even better. It posted profits before tax of N83 billion for the first nine months, up 10.4 per cent year on year. Analysts forecast it to earn about N106bn for the full year, which would amount to a return on average equity of close to 20 per cent.
“Zenith’s results for 2013 are all the more impressive given the headwinds that Nigerian banks have faced recently. They have had to contend with falling interest rates on government bonds, at least in the first half of the year, and an increase in the levy they pay to AMCON, a bad bank set up by the government amid the financial crisis. Zenith has managed to overcome these by making plenty of effort to expand its loan book. It has also been growing its non-interest revenues. “[This year] will be a little bit difficult for the banks,” says Godwin Emefiele, the bank’s managing director.
“But it will still be a good year. Banks have got to diversify their revenue base. That’s what most of them, particularly Zenith, are doing.”
He adds that since the bank was established, it has invested in technology to improve customer service, something that has enabled it to grow its deposit base faster than most rivals. “We’ve always known we need strong technology to back up customer service,” he says. “We will continue to do that.”