Unity Bank Plc wednesday announced its audited financial results for the year ended December 31, 2016, showing a drop in profit after tax (PAT) by 53 per cent to N2.184 billion from N4.689 billion in 2015.
However, the bank recorded gross earnings of N84 billion, seven per cent higher than N78 billion recorded in 2015. The gross earnings were driven largely by growth in transaction-based income.
Despite the high inflation in 2016, the bank reduced its operating expenses by three per cent from N29 billion to N26 billion, reflecting a significant step by the bank in maximising derived benefits through the efficient allocation of resources and cost containment initiatives embarked upon by the new management.
The bank attributed the lower bottom-line partly to high impairment charge of N35 billion in 2016, compared with N27 billion charged in December 2015.
The bank grew its deposit liabilities by 14 per cent from N231billion recorded in December 2015 to N264 billion in December 2016, indicating effect of increased customer confidence, renewed customer care and the emerging innovative products rolled out during the year.
Commenting on the result, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Unity Bank, Tomi Somefun said: “The key performance indicators point to increasing resilience in the face of challenging economic headwinds that characterised the operating environment in 2016.
“Despite the harsh operating environment, the bank remains stable having driven strategic choices to inspire greater market confidence and leveraging cost optimisation strategies, presence in the Northern markets which served as a bulwark, just as the deepening of our presence in Lagos /Southwest also balanced its outlook in the Southern markets. The proactive steps and efficiency gains arising from major business decisions produced encouraging results that elicited double digit growth in deposit portfolio of the bank during the year.
“The direction for the bank in the coming years is to diversify the earnings base and target growth in double digit territory by aggressive pursuit of new business opportunities in the retail & Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) businesses, agribusiness, financial inclusion, digital banking, increase portfolio mix and drive more traffic to our channels with strong collaboration from our institutional and financial investors that are poised to add a new phase of business revolution to our growth model.”
To support this strategic objective, the bank is actively in the process of raising significant capital to leverage increased resources to expand its operations and improve existing technology infrastructure.