Sterling Bank Plc, on Tuesday gross earnings of N113.043bn for the nine months ended September 30, 2019, as against N114.584bn in the corresponding period of 2018, of which net interest income stood at N47.53bn, up by 19.3% from N39.834bn in 2018.
The net interest income growth, the bank said in a statement was driven by a 200% growth in Sterling Bank’s retail and consumer loans portfolio, by Specta, the bank’s innovative digital lending platform, which supported with volumes averaging N8bn per month, reaching over 40,000 individuals as at Q3 2019.
Reacting to the result, Abubakar Suleiman, Chief Executive of Sterling Bank, said the “performance continues to reflect positive results of strategic decisions and investments in our focus areas. We recorded significant improvement in a transaction led revenue and our funding base riding on the adoption of digital channels. Overall, we delivered a 7.7% increase in operating income and profit after tax of N7.58 billion.
“Going into the final quarter, we will continue to take a customer-centric centric approach to achieve growth and enhance our digital capacity to further support the business, while remaining focused on exceeding our performance in the previous year.”
He noted that the bank recorded a 7.7% improvement in operating income of N65.493 billion during the quarter ended September 30, 2019, against N60.822bn during the corresponding period of 2018 and profit after tax of N7.578bn in 2019.
Other financial highlights showed that customer deposits also climbed to N853.551bn during the period under review, from N760.6bn in the corresponding period of 2018, indicating a growth of 12.2% while loan advances to customers grew to N635.093bn in 2019 from N621.017bn in 2018, representing a growth of 2.3%.
In the same way, shareholders’ funds rose to N109.535bn during the period under review in 2019 compared to N97.800 billion reported for the corresponding of 2018, representing a growth of 12 percent while operating income after impairment rose by 1.3% to N61.583bn compared to N60.822 billion in September 2018.
Further analysis also showed that non-performing loans dropped to 7.4% during the review period in 2019 from 8.7% in the corresponding period of 2018, representing an improvement of 14.6%.