Zenith Bank Ghana maintains strong capital buffers, liquidity not threatened – Group CEO
Zenith Bank Group CEO, Ebenezer Onyeagwu, has said the Ghanaian subsidiary of Zenith Bank continues to have strong capital buffers despite the recent domestic debt restructuring programme undertaken by the Government of Ghana.
Making the assertion during an interaction with journalists on the release of the Group’s 2022 Financial Statements, Onyeagwu noted that the liquidity position of the Ghanaian subsidiary is not threatened by the debt restructuring programme.
“We still maintain very strong capital buffers in Ghana, liquidity position of the Ghanaian subsidiary is not threatened and our shareholder funds are clearly above regulatory minimum,” he quipped.
Zenith Bank Ghana is yet to make public, its financial statements for the fourth quarter of December 2022 for the extent of the impact of the debt restructuring on its liquidity to determined.
Zenith Bank Ghana for the year ended 2021 improved on its loan asset quality by reducing its non-performing loans (NPL).
The bank for the year under review reduced its NPL from 6.15% in 2020 to 4.4% in 2021.
Capital Adequacy Ratio of the bank for the review period also increased slightly from 43.17% in 2020 to 45.09% in 2021.
The capital adequacy ratio (CAR) is a measurement of a bank’s available capital expressed as a percentage of a bank’s risk-weighted assets and liabilities.
Total assets value of the bank within the review year also witnessed an appreciable increase of some GHS 800m, as assets value grew from GHS 8.03bn in the previous year to GHS 8.86bn in 2021.
Accounting for the increase in Zenith Bank’s assets value was its cash and bank balances and pledged trading assets of GHS 1.71bn and GHS 485m in 2021 respectively.
In 2021, the bank’s cash and bank balances and pledged trading assets stood at GHS 1.48bn and GHS 263m respectively.
Liabilities of Zenith bank increased from GHS 6.57bn in 2020 to GHS 7.31bn in 2021, driven mainly by deposits from its customers which amounted to some GHS 6.39bn.
A perusal of the bank’s 2021 Financial Statement by norvanreports however, revealed that the bank’s net profit declined to GHS 220m in 2021 from GHS 338m in 2020.
Accounting for the decline in the bank’s net profit was a decline in its operating income from GHS 732m in 2020 to GHS 637m in 2021.
