Guaranty Trust Bank and Zenith Bank are the top lenders as measured by the profit-per-employee, or PPE, metric.
That according to recent findings by MoneyCentral which analyzed  data from the financial statements of the largest banks to find out how much they are making per employee.
Companies calculate profits per employee by dividing their net income by the number of their full-time employees. And a higher ratio means a worker is being rewarded more for contributing to the entity’s brand.
As you would expect, the most profitable banks like GTBank and Zenith, have the highest profits per employee. GTBank’s PPE, for instance, is a whopping N60.62 million, while Zenith’s PPE comes in more less at N30.56 million.
Meanwhile, Stanbic IBTC Holdings’ PPE is N28 million followed by Access Bank, which has a PPE of N19.50 million. United Bank for Africa (UBA) has a figure of N10.49 million, First Bank Holdings has a PPE of N9.06 million.
Union Bank Nigeria, First City Monument Bank (FCMB), and Sterling have PPEs of N7.97 million, N5.43 million, and N4.74 million respectively.
The vast majority of analysts have opined that the PPE is a better measure of corporate governance because it takes into consideration intangible assets such as human capital and its attendance trademarks and goodwill.
They have called on managers to pay more attention to metric as a measure of efficiency, instead of focusing on the return on invested capital that shows how the resources of the shareholders are used in generating higher profit.
Basically, Guaranty Trust has an excellent automation system that underpins cost optimisation, and it has fewer branches but makes more money.
However, the low yield environment is making it difficult for banks to achieve double digit growth in profit, which is why they have to leverage technology to shrink costs.
Interestingly, banks have embarked on some cost cut measures such as laying off workforce so as to surmount the coronavirus headwinds and punitive regulatory environment.
Nigerian banks cut over 3,000 jobs last year, one of the biggest deepest job losses for the sector in the past 5-years, but some have hired even amid the headwinds.