By Africa’s global bank, United Bank for Africa has recorded a massive increase of 41% growth in profits at the end of the first three months in 2017.
The growth was disclosed in it’s unaudited first quarter results which showed significant growth across major income lines.
This early growth in 2017 can be traced to the striving performance of the bank in previous financial year. It was gathered that the Group’s African subsidiaries also contributed 35% of earnings.
UBA Group leveraged on it’s strong growth in both interest and non-interest income as well as increased efficiency as it recorded N25.5billion in profit before tax in the first quarter ending March 31st 2017 compared to N18.1billion achieved in the first quarter of 2016.
The Pan African financial institution recorded a profit after tax of N22.4billion in the first quarter which is an impressive 32% year-on-year growth when compared to N17billion achieved in same period in 2016.
The Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of UBA, Mr Kennedy Uzoka expressed satisfaction with the bank’s impressive performance in the first quarter of 2017 despite the stiff competition and challenging business environment. The bank sustained its strong profitability recording an annialised 19.4% Return on Average Equity (RoAE).
“Our performance in the first quarter of the year strengthens our optimism on economic and business recovery in Nigeria and many of our markets across Africa. More importantly, this result is evidence of efficiency gains in our pricing, balance sheet management and operations,” Uzoka said.
“Driven by our balance sheet liquidity, we grew interest income by 43% to an unprecedented quarterly run-rate of N77 billion. Buoyed by improving foreign currency supply in Nigeria, remittance and trade services fees almost doubled and foreign currency trading income grew by 148% year-on-year, as we leveraged our Customer First initiatives to gain market share in these offerings. More so, it is my pleasure to report that we made further progress in our consistent retail penetration, as reflected in the 12% year-to-date growth in retail savings and current account deposits. Notwithstanding the tight interest rate environment, we recorded a 30bps reduction in cost of funds to 3.4%, a positive result of our customer service-led approach to low cost deposit mobilization. As at Q1, low cost savings and current accounts (CASA) represent 80% of our deposit funding,” he added.
