UBA edged out Zenith Bank as the second largest bank with highest deposits trailing behind Access Bank as data shows that deposits held in ten of Nigeria’s largest banks topped N34.4 trillion in the first 9 months of 2021 about N3.55 trillion higher than what was reported at
A closer look into the data reveals Access Bank came tops as the bank with the largest customer deposit in Nigeria with N6.2 trillion. The bank grew its deposits by 11.4 percent year to date as it cemented its leadership in deposit mobilization among its peers.
Access Bank’s deposit however remains at 18 percent of total banking sector deposits.
UBA edged out Zenith Bank as the second largest bank with highest deposits posting a 7.2 percent rise in customer deposits to N6.08 trillion. Zenith Bank reported a total of N6.04 trillion in third place growing deposits by a whopping 13.1 percent.
Zenith Bank’s deposit growth was the highest among its FUGAZ peers. GTB reported a deposit of N3.7 trillion representing a 6.7 percent rise.
Stanbic IBTC is the most aggressive bank this year when it comes to deposits, crossing the N1 trillion mark after recording a massive 33.5 percent deposit growth this year.
Stanbic recorded significant deposit growth in its term deposit category jumping from N98.2 billion to N338.7 billion between December last year and September 2021.
Next to Stanbic is Sterling Bank with a 21 percent rise in deposits to N1.1 trillion compared to N950 billion in December 2021. Just like Stanbic, growth for Sterling Bank came from its term deposits which doubled from N155.2 billion to N302.5 billion. Fidelity Bank, FCMB and Union Bank all recorded double-digit growth in their deposits.
Meanwhile, challenger banks such as Kuda, V Bank have made significant inroads into the retail banking space as they offer incentives to younger Nigerians to abandon the more traditional banks.
With the continuous increase in mobile phone penetration, Nigerian banks have also fought back aggressively, upgrading their mobile bank applications with features that compete favourably with most of the challenging banking applications out there.
Apart from Challenger banks, Payment Service Banks like MTN also provide a different form of competition to Nigerian banks.
While most newer banks focus on attracting younger account openers or newer businesses, traditional banks create a value chain of products built into their ecosystem that allows them to mobilize a sizable deposit.
For example, deposits are mobilized from accounts held on behalf of thousands of fund managers, government accounts, large corporations with international presence, traders with high import and export needs, SMEs, manufacturers etc.
