The year 2024 was marked by improved profitability for most commercial banks in the country, marked by a steep increase in interest income on the back of a high-interest rate environment, as well as gains from repriced FX assets.
Commercial banks, in a bid to leverage the high interest rate, deployed more funds towards customer loans while leveraging high-yielding fixed income instruments and interbank placements.
According to the analysis of 10 major publicly listed commercial banks with major operations in Nigeria, Fidelity Bank is the Second Best in Nigeria in 2024.
Commercial banks in the country were ranked based on defined methodologies, which were developed to assess their level of improvement compared to the previous year.
The indicators include profit growth, asset growth, change in ROAE, deposit growth, loan growth, change in cost-to-income ratio, change in Capital Adequacy Ratio,etc.
From the research, Fidelity Bank ranked the second-best performing bank in 2024, with notable improvements in profitability, cost efficiency, deposit mobilization, capital base increase, and performing loans.
The bank recorded the highest profit growth amongst its peers with a 179.6% increase year-on-year to N278.1 billion, as well as a substantial improvement in ROAE, moving from 26% to 41.7%.
Customer deposits also increased by 47.9% to N5.9 trillion, ranking second in that category, while the capital adequacy ratio improved to 23.5% from 16.2%. NPL ratio also dropped to 3.1% from 3.5%.
Wema bank came first in the ranking while FBN Holdings, Zenith Bank and GTBANK came 3rd ,4th and 5th respectively trailing Fidelity Bank.
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