Nigeria, April 16 -- Nigeria's biggest lender, Access Holdings, reached a new revenue milestone in its thirty-fifth year last year, with gross earnings only a breath away from the N5 trillion mark.

Bottom line was, however, only 3.7 per cent up, even though revenue surged by as much as 88 per cent.

The financial services group was able to turn just 13.2 per cent of gross earnings into profit as cost-to income ratio surged, crowding out net profit margin, its latest audited accounts show.

That was a sharp fall from a year ago when the margin was roughly 24 per cent.

The relatively low margin makes the banking group an outlier in the high profitability trend that has been noted among the Big Five banks, with net profit margins for GTCO,...