Abubakar Y Zakariya
Nigerian financial institution, Access Bank Plc, by total assets raked in N123.9 billion in profits from its foreign operations in the first 9 months of 2022 as the bank’s aggressive investments outside Nigeria continue to pay off.
The bank reported a pre-tax profit of N147.2 billion year to date, meanings its offshore operations contributed a larger percentage of the total.
This time last year, the bank’s pre-tax profit from offshore operations was N56.3 billion out of total profits of N135 billion.
Access Bank has been on an aggressive offshore expansion under its MD/CEO Herbert Wigwe operating in 14 countries including Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia, Rwanda, UK.
The bank also owns majority shares in all the subsidiary countries abroad.
The book value of the bank’s investments in all its subsidiaries stood at N247.3 billion at the end of the quarter compared to N215.7 billion same period last year.
This was mostly driven by its new footprint in Cameroon and an increase in investment in the UK subsidiary.
Ghana leads the pack: Apart from Access Bank Guinea and South Africa, all the bank’s foreign operations reported a pre-tax profit with Ghana reporting the highest at about N31.6 billion.
This compares to the N34.1 billion pre-tax profits reported in Ghana for the whole of 2021.
The UK operations also did very well in the first 9 months of this year reporting N22 billion compared to N22.6 billion reported in the whole of 2021.
Access Bank Ghana’s operations are the largest outside Nigeria with about 52 branches as of 2021.
