The paper seeks to investigate the effect of intellectual capital on the financial performance of deposit money banks in Nigeria. Managing intellectual capital will help deposit money banks enhance their financial performance via increased return on assets, return on equity and return on sales. Intellectual capital increases the market value of organizations, improves better communication, optimizes utilization of potentials, increases value creation ability, and better image, enhances customer satisfaction, motivates employees, and indeed enhances most business processes. Intellectual capital theory and knowledge-based theory were adopted as baseline theories for the study as they emphasis the importance of using the human ability to create new business processes which result in better services for consumers and ensure improved financial performance of the organization. The paper concludes that there is a positive relationship between intellectual capital and the financial performance of deposit money banks in Nigeria, thus intellectual capital should be recognized as an important business resource.