THE Wema Bank Plc has reported a profit before tax of N1.83 billion for the first half of the year. The bank said in a statement said that its profit before tax grew by 27.44 percent to N1.83 billion in the first half of 2018 from N1.43 billion in the same period of 2017.

It said its unaudited financial results for the first half of 2018 showed a 5.12 percent growth in gross earnings, which was driven by 0.12 percent and 30.45 percent growth in interest and non-interest income, respectively.

Ademola Adebise, acting managing director, Wema Bank, while commenting on the results, said the performance of the bank in the first half of the year was largely in line with the expectations of the management. He stated that deposit grew by 39 percent to N354.88 billion on the back of continued acceptance of the Wema Bank brand and the sustained success of its flagship digital bank, ALAT.

“We also improved our earnings capacity; gross earnings increased by 5.12 percent from N30.37 billion in the first half of 2017 to N31.93 billion in the first half of 2018, while profit before tax closed 27.44 percent higher at N1.83 billion.

“The bank continues to execute its five-year retail strategy with a clear mandate to improve performance by leveraging innovation. The emphasis for us is not just to digitise our product offerings to customers but also to build a technology driven back-end infrastructure to further improve on turnaround time and efficiency.

“The bank also continues to improve its customer acquisition through the launch of ALAT and the impressive performance of its unstructured supplementary service data platform (*945#).”

– Jul. 20, 2018 @ 11:45 GMT