Zenith Bank Zooms Past Access Bank As Customer Deposits Cross N4 Trillion

First Bank is still the largest Nigerian bank by customer deposits but Zenith Bank is closing in.

Zenith Bank Nigeria Plc is now the second-largest bank in Nigeria by customer deposits crossing N4 trillion for the first time.

The bank is next only to First Bank Ltd which remains the largest by customer deposits.

Zenith Bank has also now blown past Access Bank Plc which was in second place following the 2018 merger with Diamond Bank Plc.

Nairalytics, the research arm of Nairametrics, aggregates this data by focussing only on customer deposits excluding deposits held for other banks and financial institutions. It also excludes deposits in any of the group’s subsidiaries.

How they performed

First Bank remains the largest Nigerian bank by deposits with N4.2 trillion customer deposits an 8.2% rise from N3.9 trillion reported in December 2019.
Zenith Bank came second and for the first time crossing the N4 trillion mark to close the quarter at N4 trillion. This compares to N3.4 trillion as of December 2019 representing a 17.2% rise in deposits.
Access Bank which was second at the end of 2019 with N3.4 trillion moved to third place after it gained just 8.9% in new deposits to close at N3.99 trillion.

UBA performed the best in terms of growth rising 25.3% from N2.7 trillion to N3.4 trillion only.
GT Bank remained bottom 5th with a deposit of N2.4 trillion representing a 19.5% growth from the N2 trillion deposits reported at the end of 2019.

Bottom Line: For several years commercial banks in Nigeria have scrambled for customer deposits seeing this as a sign of strength and domination of Nigeria’s burgeoning banking sector. However, competition is less emphasized in recent years as the top 5 banks pull away from tier 2 banks.

They also face a different set of challenges from FinTechs as modern technology bridges the resources required to sign on new customers.
Rather than focusing only on relationship banking, banks now rely on mobile apps, USSD codes, internet banking, and social media to woo customers.
Banks also have to comprehend with CBN’s frequent CRR related debits which affect banks with the largest deposits that fall below the regulatory required loan to deposit ratio.