Financial services group FBN Holdings posted a 95.1 per cent increase in net profit for the six months of the year.

The performance shows that its flagship banking subsidiary – First Bank of Nigeria Limited – continues to benefit significantly from interest rate hikes by the central bank, which allows lenders to charge more for loans.

The apex bank jerked up the interest rate three times in the first half of the year, raising it by 750 basis points to 26.3 per cent as it sought to decelerate Nigeria’s inflation rate, which leapt to its highest level in nearly thirty years.

The group’s interest income for the period stood at N947.7 billion, compared to N371.1 billion a year ago, according to its newly released financial report for the period.

Net interest income, a profitability metric that measures the difference between what a bank generates from interest-bearing assets and how much it pays on interest-bearing liabilities, climbed 314 per cent to N514.9 billion.

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