Wema Bank Plc has endeared itself to investors and analysts in the Nigerian financial sector with its breathtaking efficiency, excellent customer service, impressive result, and innovativeness in the Nigerian banking sector, earning it the Top 5 bank in Nigeria in the first quarter of 2022.
The banking industry generally recorded impressive growth in the first quarter of the year, recording a 23.24% year-on-year increase in real GDP, evidenced by the performance of the twelve commercial banks listed on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX).
Wema Bank proved its mettle in the key metrics of total assets growth, customer deposit growth, profit after tax growth, loan book growth, return on average equity and cost to income ratio.
According to a special report on the financial performance of quoted Nigerian banks in the first quarter of 2022 by Nairametrics, some banks dominated the efficiency, deposit, and profitability metrics, especially newly re-engineered banks like Wema Bank and Unity Bank, among others.
Indeed, Wema Bank’s excellent showing across all the performance metrics earned it the second best bank in the first quarter of 2022 after Zenith.
“Taking the average of the performance of the banks across the six metrics under our radar, we see Zenith Bank on top of the rank, followed by Wema Bank, Stanbic IBTC, First Bank, and Fidelity Bank based on their Q1 2022 numbers”, the report said.
For the analysis, the Q1 2022 results of 12 banks were tracked, namely: Access Holdings, FBN Holdings, FCMB, Fidelity Bank, Wema Bank, GT Holding, Stanbic IBTC, Sterling Bank, Union Bank, UBA, Unity Bank, and Zenith Bank.
Wema Bank led the others in profit after tax growth in the first quarter of 2022 with 119 percent compared with what it made in the previous quarter. Other bank’s with strong showing in this category are FBN (108%); Sterling Bank (47.9%); and FCMB 44.6%).
