Wema Bank Plc, the pioneer of Africa’s fully digital bank, announced on Monday its full year audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2021. Significant improvement was seen across all the metrics of profitability and asset quality as the bank crossed the N1 trillion mark in total assets.
Gross earnings in 2021 rose by 15.3 percent to N92.1 billion, up from N79.9 billion in 2020. Profit before tax increased to N12.4 billion in 2021, as against N5.94 billion the bank realised in the previous year, translating to an increase of 108.3 percent.
Interest income grew by double digits to N73.3 billion in 2021 compared with N63 billion in the pandemic year. Net interest income was up by 29.2 percent to N39.9 billion, up from N30.9 billion in 2020.
Operating expenses grew by 22.8 percent to N44.2 billion, from N36 billion in 2020, confirming the high inflationary trend in the country. The highly improved financial results in a complex business environment such as Nigeria’s were not lost on the management of the bank.
“I am delighted to announce our performance for the year ended 31st December 2021. The Bank’s FY 2021 results show robust growth in all key financial metrics despite the challenging macro-economic environment.
“Our year end numbers highlight the strong growth trajectory of the financial institution. We comfortably crossed the ₦1 trillion mark in total assets, with a share of approximately 3% of industry deposits”, Ademola Adebise, Wema Bank’s managing director, said.
Further, the bank’s earnings per share rose to 23.2 kobo in 2021 as against 11.9 kobo in the previous year.
In line with the bank’s commitment to the Nigerian economy, loans and advances in 2021 rose by 16.33 percent to N418.9 billion from N360.1 billion in the previous year. This indicated that the bank mobilised N58.8 billion for different business units in the country in 2021. Deposits trended upwards to N927.5 billion in contrast to N804.9 billion in 2020.
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Returns on average equity and assets stood at 17.3 percent and 1.16 percent in 2021 as against 14.3 percent and 0.85 percent in 2020 respectively. Non-performing loans were within the regulatory benchmark. Wema Bank’s NPL in 2021 stood at 4.88 percent while capital adequacy ratio was 15.46 percent. Additionally, the bank’s non-interest income grew by 11.9 percent to N18.8 billion in 2021 from N16.8 billion in 2020.
“A key measure of success for us is a consistent growth in our balance sheet and customer base – and we are glad that we are reporting healthy growth in all these areas. Looking forward, we expect that the strong growth will be sustained despite the tough business climate as we execute our customer experience improvement initiatives built around a digital first banking strategy and become first in class in that sphere.
The bank will also continue to focus on our digital business, which is a key boost for customer acquisition, consumer lending and transaction volumes while not neglecting our corporate and commercial play. In our commercial business, we will continue our aggressive strategy to improve our lending business alongside trade and other revenue lines. We have also unveiled our new Mission and Vision statements which underpins our corporate strategy. We want to be the dominant digital platform in Africa delivering seamless financial services.”, Tunde Mabawonkun, Wema Bank’s CFO, said.
Wema Bank has proposed a 24k final dividend for shareholders whose names appear in the register of the company on or before April 27, 2022. Payment to qualified shareholders will be made on May 10, 2022.
