Higher interest rates, naira devaluation drive Access Holdings’ profit to all-time peak

Net profit at Access Holdings went past a quarter of a trillion naira for the nine months to September in a feat never before recorded by the banking group.

With the earnings at N250.4 billion already dwarfing that for the whole of last year by N98.2 billion or 64.5 per cent, the development sets shareholders up for stronger dividends when the curtains draw on the current year.

Nigeria’s biggest lender also reported a spring in revenue to a record N1.6 trillion from N906 billion a year ago, which too surpassed the full-year 2022 level, in this case by 14.8 per cent.

The longest cycle of interest rate hikes by the Central Bank of Nigeria, aimed at holding back a cost-of-living crisis, is giving banks an open sesame to charge borrowers higher interest.

Interest contributed nearly two-thirds of Access Holdings’ gross earnings within the period. But net interest income, which highlights the difference between the cash the lender generated from lending and what it paid out to savers, only grew by two-fifths to N390 billion for the group, whose deposits rose to N16.2 trillion from N11.3 trillion a year ago.