Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc. Photo: GTCO
Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc and Zenith Bank are leading Nigeria’s biggest banks in capital adequacy ratio in the first quarter of 2026.
The CAR compares a bank’s available capital to its risk‑weighted assets to ensure the institution can absorb a reasonable amount of losses and avoid insolvency during economic downturns, according to Investopedia, an investment dictionary. A bank with a good CAR has sufficient capital to absorb potential losses. Thus, it has less risk of becoming insolvent and losing depositors’ money, according to the Corporate Finance Institute.
The Central Bank of Nigeria mandates banks to maintain a minimum CAR based on their licence type. For banks that are international and systemically important banks, the CBN allows a CAR of 15 per cent. But national and regional banks have a CAR of 10 per cent.
According to the analyses of the Q1 financial results of First Holdco, UBA, GTCO, Access and Zenith, often referred to as FUGAZ, the bank with the best CAR in the quarter is GTCO. Related News FCMB Group’s H1 profit jumps 99% to N157.3bn Banks’ maximum lending rate drops to 33.16% Businesses split over borrowing costs, access to credit
