Grow customer deposits by 14% to N264Billion
Unity Bank Plc has released its audited financial results for the year ended December 31, 2016, to the Nigerian Stock Exchange posting of gross earnings of N84bn and profit after tax of N2.1billion.
A review of the Bank’s performance shows positive growth across key financial metrics, an attestation of the progress of its repositioning efforts. Despite the economic headwinds, the Gross earnings for the year grew by 7% to N84billion from N78billion reported in December 2015; driven largely by growth in transaction-based income.
Operating expenses was down by about 3% to N26billion in 2016 from N29billion in December 2015. This represents a significant step by the Bank in maximizing derived benefits through the efficient allocation of resources and cost containment initiatives embarked upon by the new management.
Profit before tax however stood at N1.82billion, representing a decline of 22% from N2.34billion recorded in the December 2015. This is attributed to higher impairment charge of N35billion in 2016; up by 8% from N27billion charged in December 2015 arising from impairment charges on loans.
The Bank also grew its deposit liabilities by 14% from N231billion recorded in December 2015 to N264billion in December 2016. This is indicative of increased customer confidence in the Bank, renewed customer care and the emerging innovative products rolled out during the year to delight its teeming and growing customers throughout Nigeria and beyond.
The enhanced brand recognition arose from tailor-made product developments schemes for Retail, SME as well as the Commercial and Corporate customer base, expansions of its e-business platforms and technology-driven transformation engagements across all sectors of the banking sphere.
Commenting on the result, the Managing Director/CEO, Tomi Somefun said: “the key performance indicators point to increasing resilience in the face of challenging economic headwinds that characterized the operating environment in 2016.
“Despite the harsh operating environment, the Bank remains stable having driven strategic choices to inspire greater market confidence and leveraging cost optimization strategies, presence in the Northern markets which served as a bulwark, just as the deepening of our presence in Lagos /Southwest also balanced its outlook in the Southern markets. The proactive steps and efficiency gains arising from major business decisions produced encouraging results that elicited double digit growth in deposit portfolio of the Bank during the year.
“The direction for the Bank in the coming years is to diversify the earnings base and target growth in double digit territory by aggressive pursuit of new business opportunities in the Retail & SME businesses, Agribusiness, financial inclusion, digital banking, increase portfolio mix and drive more traffic to our channels with strong collaboration from our institutional and financial investors that are poised to add a new phase of business revolution to our growth model” she said.
To support this strategic objective, the Bank is actively in the process of raising significant capital to leverage increased resources to expand its operations and improve existing technology infrastructure to deliver quality banking services, focus on the ongoing transformation initiatives to consolidate Unity Bank as a retail bank of choice towards delivering superior financial performance and value to all stakeholders.
The Bank is also reengineering its enterprise risk management process to galvanize the growth vision as it taps into opportunities in the market and mitigate shocks to realize its short/long-term corporate goals.
Consequently, the Bank embarked on strong actions to de-risk its balance sheet during the year through a process of cleaning the huge legacy non-performing loans that have slowed down its operation.
The exercise is near completion and will pave way for the creation of new quality assets and launching of new products in identified market segments to attract capital receipts, fee income from increased level of transactions and interest income to sustain the growth trajectory.
Mrs. Somefun also noted that the Bank will replicate its services in far flung markets ridding on technology and product development to achieve greater market penetration in other regions of the country.
With an energetic workforce that have proven resilient in times of turbulence, the Bank is poised to sustain its long-term value creation for its stakeholders and contribute to the Nigeria’s growth vision and well-being of the population through its innovative products especially those that are directed at the Agricultural sector and the overall financial inclusion strategy of the Federal Government.
