By Fola James
Fidelity Bank Plc has sustained enough growth in key areas of interest to indicate that the lender is poised not to lose its market share to its competitors, the managing director of the bank, Nnamdi Okonkwo has said.
Okonkwo’s comment came on the crest of the bank’s FY 2019 results released on Monday at the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).
The results showed strong growth in key performance indices.
He said “We are delighted at the results which clearly showed that we sustained our performance trajectory and continued to increase our market share driven by significant traction in our chosen business segments.
We now have 47.4percent of our customers enrolled on the mobile/internet banking products, 82percent of total transactions now done on digital platforms and 31.1percent of fee-based income now coming from our digital banking business”.
Savings deposits now accounts for about 22.5percent of total deposits, an attestation of our increasing market share in the retail segment”
According to the results posted by the Regulator Gross Earnings grew by 14percent to N215.5billion from N189billion in 2018, while Profit before tax rose by 21percent to N30.4billion compared with N25.1billion recorded in the previous year.
Net profits spiked by 24percent from N22.9billion from 2018 in 2018 to N28.4billion in 2019.
The bank will pay a dividend of 20 kobo per share translating to N5.8billion compared to the dividend of 11 kobo paid in 2018, the management said.
Retail loans grew by 42.9percent to N53.8billion due to new digital lending products and partnership with Fintechs, the bank said, adding that so far it has disbursed over 70,000 micro-loans on its flagship digital lending product (Fidelity FastLoan) in partnership with Migo.
Net Interest Income increased by 13.2percent to N83.1billion in 2018. Net Operating Income rose by 15.6percent from N97.2billion to N112.3billion while Total Assets grew by 22.9percent from N1.719.9trillion to N2.114trillion within the period.
Meanwhile, market analysts insist that the bank’s efforts aimed at strengthening and sustaining leadership in the retail market, is yielding positive results.
