AN ASSESSMENT OF THE PERFORMANCE OF ROKEL COMMERCIAL BANK (SL) LTD, 2005–2025: A TWENTY-YEAR REVIEW OF FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE, NON-FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE, KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS AND COMPETITIVE POSITION IN SIERRA LEONE’S BANKING SECTOR
Abstract
This article assesses the performance of Rokel Commercial Bank (SL) Ltd (RCBank), Sierra Leone’s largest majority state-owned commercial bank, over the twenty years from 2005 to 2025. It asks how the bank’s financial and non-financial performance evolved, which indicators best explain its long-run trajectory, and how it stands against Sierra Leone Commercial Bank, UBA Sierra Leone, and the sector as a whole. The study adopts a longitudinal single-case design grounded in secondary data: audited financial statements as reported publicly, Bank of Sierra Leone soundness indicators, and peer bank disclosures. Ratio and trend analysis is combined with a balanced scorecard, benchmark comparison, Porter’s five forces, SWOT and PESTLE assessments, interpreted through an integrated framework that draws on financial intermediation theory, the resource-based and dynamic capability views, agency and institutional theory, and stakeholder theory. Three findings stand out. First, RCBank moved from a sanctioned and undercapitalised position around 2015, with a non-performing loan ratio of 11.74 per cent still recorded in 2022, to a strongly capitalised institution by 2024, when share capital tripled, and profit after tax exceeded NLe140 million for a second consecutive year. Second, that recovery has been balance-sheet led rather than efficiency led: profit, loan and deposit growth are strong, but returns on assets and equity, cost efficiency and credit intermediation lag the best-performing peers, and the bank’s loan-to-deposit ratio remains close to the sector’s low level. Third, the competitive advantages the bank possesses (heritage, national reach, state backing and capital) are positional resources that peers are now matching through digital scale and cost discipline. The article contributes a longitudinal, theory-driven evaluation of a state-owned bank in a post-conflict low-income economy, a setting almost absent from the bank performance literature, and sets out implications for the bank’s board, the Bank of Sierra Leone, the Government as majority shareholder, and future researchers.
JEL: A10, A11 E2, E4, E5
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejefr.v10i5.2302
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