Unity Bank Plc grew its assets base to N492.02billion representing an increase of 67.90 per cent from the N293.05 billion recorded in 2019.
This is even as the agric-focused lender declared gross earnings of N42.71 billion within the period under review.
A review of the bank’s audited results for the full year ended December 31, 2020, by its Executive Director/Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Ebenezer Kolawole, during an interactive session with journalists held via a virtual platform on Monday, showed that the bank improved its bottomline marginally as its profit after tax stood at N2.09 billion.
Also, its profit before tax closed at N2.22 billion, in a year that was defined by the unmitigated impact of global pandemic characterised by disruptions in business activities and general downturn that resulted in revenue/returns dip in major leading sectors globally.
The bank equally grew its customers’ deposit portfolio to N356.62 billion, up from N257.69 billion in the corresponding period of 2019, representing a 38.4 per cent growth.
This affirmed positive market uptake of the bank’s product offerings, as well as the lender’s growing customer base to its recent aggressive push with agile customer-centric products, which has played a role in deepening financial services penetration especially to a wider world, underserved spectrum of the retail market.
Other major highlight of the audited financial statement included growth in its net operating income which rose to N25.46 billion, from N23.21 billion in the corresponding period of 2019. This represented a 9.71 per cent increase.
This was even as the net interest income recorded a significant jump, as it rose by 7.6 per cent to N17.75 billion, from N16.49 billion in the corresponding period of 2019. Earnings per Share closed at 17.85 Kobo.
Similarly, the bank’s gross loans portfolio increased by 92.9 per cent to N206.2 billion in December 2020 from N106.9 billion in December 2019.
“The bank’s lending strategy was specially tailored to support the nation’s food agenda. This had the added advantage of improving food security across the country, providing employment to thousands of youths and entrepreneurs, contributing to the conservation of forex stocks and mitigating security challenges by ensuring adequate empowerment of citizens and deepening skills acquisition across the value chain,” he explained.
Commenting on the result, Unity Bank’s Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Mrs. Tomi Somefun stated that the results showed the resilience of the bank during unprecedented times of uncertainties and our ability to innovate and focus on key balance sheet items that will enable us maintain growth trajectory.
She further opined that: “Consequently, for the year under review, the opportunities to significantly create more quality assets for the business, thought to have sustainable impact, informed part of choices made and we have seen some encouraging market uptake in this regard, apart from the benefits to the enterprise bottom-line that have also started trickling in.”
Somefun further said: “We will latch on targeted strategies to deploy significant investment in technology in order to ride the waves of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
