The Profit Growth Is a Credit Story, Not an Income Story
The headline numbers flatter the underlying performance. Pre-tax profit improved by ₦51.2 billion year on year, yet impairment charges fell by ₦257.1 billion over the same period. Arithmetic does the rest: before the benefit of lower provisions, Access's pre-provision earnings declined by roughly ₦206 billion. The 6% rise in net profit is therefore the residue of a much cleaner loan book, not evidence of a stronger operating year.
That distinction matters for how the result should be read against peers. Zenith Bank's nine-month numbers, released on Friday, also leaned on credit costs, but Access's swing is the largest in the tier-one set because its starting point was so heavy: ₦350 billion of charges in the first nine months of 2025 was an outlier among the big banks, and its normalisation was always going to manufacture growth in 2026 regardless of what the income lines did.
Net Interest Income Barely Moved
The soft spot is the core banking engine. Net interest income of ₦1.29 trillion grew just 2.7% in a year when Nigerian banks have generally repriced loans and treasury assets at far higher rates. For the country's largest bank by assets, that is a strikingly flat line, and it suggests the group's rapid balance sheet expansion across its African subsidiaries is not yet converting into proportionate interest earnings, whether because of funding costs, mix, or the drag of newer markets.
