Fidelity Bank: Digital banking pushed profit by 24% in 2019

Fidelity Bank Plc says the 2019 full-year financial performance can be attributed to new initiatives introduced in its retail lending and digital products segments.

According to the 2019 financial results published on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, the bank’s profit before tax grew by 21% to N30.4 billion from the N25.1 billion recorded in 2018 while net profits surged by 24% from N22.9 billion in 2018 to N28.4 billion in 2019.

The bank’s gross earnings were also reported to have risen by 14.0% to N215.5 billion from N189.0 billion in 2018.

“Buoyed by the performance, the bank plans to pay a dividend of 20kobo translating to N5.8 billion compared to the dividend of 11 kobo paid in 2018,” the bank said.

“In other indices, net interest income increased by 13.2% to N83.1 billion in 2018. Net operating income rose by 15.6% from N97.2 billion to N112.3 billion whilst total assets grew by 22.9% from N1,719.9 billion to N2,114.0 billion in the period under review.”

Commenting on the results, Nnamdi Okonkwo, the Fidelity Bank chief executive officer, 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.”

On digital banking, he said: “We now have 47.4% of our customers enrolled on the mobile/internet banking products, 82.0% of total transactions now done on digital platforms and 31.1% of fee-based income now coming from our digital banking business”.

“Savings deposits now account for about 22.5% of total deposits, an attestation of our increasing market share in the retail segment.”

Retail loans were reported to have increased by 42.9% to N53.8 billion translating to 70,000 micro-loans disbursed through its digital lending product (Fidelity FastLoan) which is in partnership with Migo.

The bank also said non-performing loans dropped to 3.3% from 5.7% in 2018 due primarily to the “growth in the loan book and a 25.1% decline in absolute NPLs resulting from the loan write-offs of over N12 billion”.