NIGERIA – Fidelity Bank Plc, one of the leading commercial banks in Nigeria, has posted a 33.01 per cent increase in profit after tax for the half-year ended June 30, 2020.

According to the bank’s financial statement, profit after tax stood at N11.30bn (about US$28.49 million), a increase of 33 percent when compared to the N8.49bn (US$21.99 million) achieved during the same period in 2019.

Gross earnings for the period increased by 2.03 per cent from N103.65bn (US$ 268.45 million) in 2019 to N105.76bn (aboutUS$273.91) in 2020.

Fidelity Bank had recently announced its unaudited results for the three months ended March 31, 2020, showing a 5.7% growth in gross earnings for the period.

Q1 gross earnings rose to US$132.35 from US$125.35 recorded in the previous quarter.

While the bank declared a profit before tax of N6.6bn (about US$17.09 million) for the first quarter of 2020, profit after tax declined by 1.4 per cent to N5.8bn (US$15.02 million).

Commenting on the result, the bank’s Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Nnamdi Okonkwo, stated that the result for the quarter showed the resilience of the bank’s business model in an increasingly challenging operating environment.

“We have continued to show growth in key performance indices while increasing our cost of risk as we anticipate a tougher business environment,” he said.

Okonkwo further noted that the Bank’s results showed significant traction in digital banking in terms of usage and adoption.

This is despite of a recent study on the digital capabilities of the Nigeria banking industry carried out by KPMG Nigeria revealing that most of the banks in the country lacked the ability to onboard a customer with end-to-end digital services.

The report stated that banks need to improve their digital capabilities in order to effectively deliver products and services via digital channels.

According to the KPMG’s report, banks lacked some of the key ingredients that should place them in the leaders’ tier.

While they are able to offer effective user journeys on their channels, KPMG noted that Nigerian banks fall behind the leaders on an array of capabilities and quality of user experience.

The report showed that no bank emerged leader in digital lending, USSD, and internet banking.

It however noted that Wema Bank emerged the leader in mobile banking and customer care scorecard while Fidelity bank was the leader in the chatbot scorecard.

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