Of Nigeria’s 20 existing banks, 10 have been rated “sound”, 9 “satisfactory” and the last, “marginal”, according to the 2012 Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) report and audited statement released on Tuesday.

The report, however, revealed the industry witnessed significant improvement as it recorded a total of 525.34 billion naira ($3.24 billion) pre-tax profit compared with the 6.71 billion ($41.5 million) naira loss reported at the end of 2011.

The Daily Independent reported the corporation explained that the recovery was driven by “the improved capitalisation resulting mainly from the activities of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), which acquired toxic assets in the industry.”

Consequently, the industry’s total assets similarly improved by 10.91 percent to 24.58 trillion naira ($152.2 billion) in 2012 from 21.89 trillion ($135.5 billion) naira the previous year.

“Of particular note was the rising trend in the banking industry’s credits to the agric sector which stood at 3.60 per cent of total loans and advances in 2012 compared to 2.15 per cent and 3.11 per cent recorded in 2010 and 2011, respectively,” NDIC said.

A low point of the 2012 NDIC report revealed Nigeria’s banking industry reported a total of 3,380 fraud cases; a 43.7 percent hike in comparison to the 2,352 cases of the previous year.

The development resulted in a 17.97 billion naira ($111.3 million) loss to the industry.