After being knocked off the top of the return on assets (ROA) ranking in 2020, United National Corporation, a large US community bank, is back in pole position and, impressively, has managed to improve its ratio to 14.80%. It is the only bank in the Top 1000 World Banks ranking to achieve a double-digit ROA.
Ukraine’s PrivatBank has the second highest ROA ratio (6.42%); however, this represents a decline from last year’s 10.55%. Tinkoff Bank has the third highest ratio (5.15%), which is also slightly lower than last year. Overall, central and eastern Europe has the highest ROA of all the regions, at 1.20%.
Guaranty Trust Bank is the only other bank with an ROA ratio of above 4%. This year, the Nigerian bank overtook Banco de Fomento Angola to head the African table for the first time.
Banco Marco of Argentina continues to top the Latin America table for the third year in a row, however its ROA dropped from 9.52% to 3.93%. In second place is Banco Hipotecario del Uruguay, up from the fourth spot last year.
Saudi Arabia’s Al Rajhi Bank has regained first place in the Middle East table, after a two-year stint in second place.
Joy Macknight is the editor of The Banker. She joined the publication in 2015 as transaction banking and technology editor. Previously, she was features editor at Profit & Loss, editorial director at Treasury Today and editor at gtnews. She also worked as a staff writer on Banking Technology and IBM Computer Today, as well as a freelancer on Computer Weekly. She has a BSc from the University of Victoria, Canada.