Access Holdings is Nigeria’s undisputed balance sheet king. ₦51.56 trillion in assets. ₦34.56 trillion in customer deposits. A continental footprint stretching from Gambia to Hong Kong. By size, it towers over every peer on the NGX. Yet size has not translated to strength where it matters most: margins, returns, and shareholder value.
The contrast is stark. Net interest margin sits at ∼3.3%, barely a third of GTCO’s 6-9% and well below Zenith’s typical range. For every ₦100 of earning assets, Access squeezes out ₦3.30 after funding costs while its closest rivals extract ₦6 to ₦9. The problem starts at the top: Access pays out 61.7% of its interest income as interest expense, leaving only 38.3% retained. GTCO keeps 50-54.5%. That 15-23% funding cost gap compounds across a ₦51 trillion balance sheet and explains why Access’ ROAA is 1.6% versus GTCO’s 5.3%.
Net profit margin tells the same story. Despite ₦5.53 trillion in gross earnings, Access converted only 13.4% to profit after tax. GTCO’s NPM runs 30-35%. The culprit is efficiency. A cost-to-income ratio of 51.7% means Access spends ₦51.70 to earn ₦100. GTCO spends ₦27.90. Scale should lower unit costs. At Access, scale has bloated them. Impairments more than doubled to ₦523.6 billion in 2025, erasing 18.5% of net interest income and confirming that growth came with credit slippage.
The market has rendered its verdict. While Access crossed ₦1 trillion in PBT for the first time, its stock trades at 2.4x P/E, 59% below DCF fair value of ₦66.18. ROAE of 18.4% lags GTCO’s 28.3% by a full 10 percentage points. Equity grew 15% last year while assets jumped 24%, leaving leverage at 11.9x on an 8.4% equity-to-assets ratio. The bank discloses no CAR in its summary results. Investors notice.
Access built an empire on deposits and securities, not loans. Loan-to-deposit ratio is 38.6%. Investment securities are 31.6% of assets. It’s a fortress with thin walls: high liquidity, low risk-weighting, but also low yield. In 2025, ₦284.5 billion in other comprehensive losses proved how exposed that fortress is to rates and FX. Total comprehensive income collapsed 58.3%.So here is the paradox of Access Holdings: the biggest bank in Nigeria delivers the margins of a mid-tier lender, the efficiency of a start-up, and the returns of a utility. Its size commands attention on the NGX. Its indices command a discount. Until management converts ₦51 trillion of assets into more than ₦1.60 of ROAA, Access will remain too big to ignore, and too inefficient to own.
