Access Bank foreign investments pays off, rakes in N123.9bn

The aggressive investment outside Nigeria has continued to pay off as Access Bank, Nigeria’s largest bank by total assets raked in N123.9bn in profits from its foreign operations in the first 9 months of 2022.

Access Bank has been on an aggressive offshore expansion under its MD/CEO Herbert Wigwe operating in 14 countries including Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, Rwanda, UK.

The bank reported a pre-tax profit of N147.2 billion a year to date meaning its offshore operations contributed a larger percentage of the total.

This time last year, the bank’s pre-tax profit from offshore operations was N56.3 billion out of total profits of N135 billion.

Apart from Access Bank Guinea and South Africa, all the bank’s foreign operations reported a pre-tax profit with Ghana reporting the highest at about N31.6 billion.

This compares to the N34.1 billion pre-tax profits reported in Ghana for the whole of 2021. The UK operations also did very well in the first 9 months of this year reporting N22 billion compared to N22.6 billion reported in the whole of 2021.

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Access Bank Ghana’s operations are the largest outside Nigeria with about 52 branches as of 2021.

The book value of the bank’s investments in all its subsidiaries stood at N247.3 billion at the end of the quarter compared to N215.7 billion in the same period last year.

This was mostly driven by its new footprint in Cameroon and an increase in investment in the UK subsidiary.

The bank’s expansion plans focus on 5 core principles which it outlines as including building partnerships, being a payment aggregator, supporting multinationals by providing banking services in any country they operate in, scaling in the countries they operate, and most important diversifying outside Nigeria to mitigate earnings risk.

Access Bank Plc reported an interest income of N265.4 billion in the first 3 months of 2022 representing a 35.7 per cent rise from the same period in 2021. The company’s gross earnings in the corresponding period were N195.5 billion.

The company also reported pre-tax profits of N49.5 billion compared to N37.8 billion reported in the corresponding period of 2021 representing a 30.9 per cent increase year on year.