…Says this year will be tough
- income rises to N3.4bn
One of Nigeria’s biggest banks, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), has said that it is targeting N205billion Profit Before Tax (PBT) in the 2018 financial year. The Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, GTB, Mr. Segun Agbaje, disclosed this during an interactive session with journalists on Friday.
He stated that although the lender expects 2018 to be a tough year for operators in the financial sector, GTB was confident of attaining its targets as its management and staff had resolved to double their efforts in order to ensure that the Tier 1 lender continues to retain its leading position in the industry.
Besides, he said that GTB will not focus on being a major player in the public sector funds market but will instead intensify its retail banking drive, adding that the lender continues to record a steady growth in its electronic banking platforms especially from mobile banking.
Pointing out that a lot of banking businesses are now moving to mobile phones, Agbaje said GTB raked in a total of N3.409billion from mobile banking in 2017, which was an improvement on the 2016 figure of N2.066 billion, while the total volume of such transactions increased from 25.8 million in 2016 to 49.5miilion last year.
Similarly, the GTB boss said the lender earned a total of N3.278.7billion from Internet banking in 2017 compared with N2, 042.8billion earned in the previous year.
He said that the level of adoption of the bank’s digital banking continues to grow in volume and value, adding : “Active USSD customer base grew by 63% year on year from 1.9 billion in FY 2016 to 3.1 billion unique customers in FY 2017.” Total value of such transactions, according to him, stood at N1.695.5trillion at the end of 2017 compared with N864.5billion in 2016.
He disclosed that all the bank’s foreign operations with the exception of its recently opened Tanzanian subsidiary are profitable.
The GTB helmsman predicted that the implementation of the International Financial Reporting Standards 9 (IFRS), which commenced last January, could lead to an increase in the volume of industry Non- Performing Loans (NPLs) or a reduction in revenue.
He explained that banks could adopt several strategies in addressing the impact of IFRS 9 including, writing off the expected loss at once or writing it off against their capital.
