FCMB Group Turns the Corner: Profit surges 142%, Balance sheet Crosses N7.6trn as Ladi Balogun’s diversification bet pays off

By Josiah Nkemakolam

For years, FCMB Group Plc occupied a curious position in Nigeria’s financial sector landscape, credible, well-run, but perpetually overshadowed by the giants of Tier-One banking.

The full-year results for 2025, released alongside the Group’s unaudited first-quarter 2026 figures, suggest that equilibrium may now be shifting decisively in FCMB’s favour. The numbers are not merely good; they are, in several respects, transformative.

Profit before tax for the year ended December 31, 2025 came in at N202.1 billion, representing an 81 per cent year-on-year expansion from N111.9 billion in 2024. But it is the profit-after-tax line that commands the sharpest attention: a 142 per cent surge to N177.3 billion, a figure that has redrawn what analysts should expect from this institution going forward. Return on equity climbed to 23.2 per cent, a metric that affirms the Group is no longer merely growing in size, but extracting meaningful value from the capital its shareholders have deployed.

The momentum has carried, with striking force, into the new financial year. In the first quarter of 2026, profit before tax reached N87.0 billion, up 148 per cent on the corresponding period of 2025,  while profit after tax rose 137 per cent to N76.5 billion. Three months into 2026, FCMB has already booked profit-after-tax equivalent to nearly half its full-year 2025 outturn. That trajectory, if sustained, would imply a year-end 2026 outcome that significantly eclipses everything that preceded it.

The Growth Trajectory

What distinguishes this performance from a cyclical windfall is the breadth of contributions across the Group’s four business divisions. In 2025, the banking subsidiary, First City Monument Bank Limited, led with a 110 per cent leap in profit before tax to N163.3 billion, powered by the deployment of proceeds from its 2024 capital raise and higher asset yields in an elevated interest rate environment. But banking was not alone.

Consumer finance, operated through Credit Direct Limited, recorded profit growth of 107 per cent. Investment management grew by 29 per cent, and investment banking posted a 90 per cent improvement. The pattern was maintained into the first quarter of 2026, where investment banking delivered a remarkable 322 per cent profit expansion, a signal that capital markets activity is accelerating alongside balance sheet earnings.

Group Chief Executive Ladi Balogun, who has long championed a multi-engine model for FCMB as a counterweight to the volatility inherent in pure-play commercial banking, can now point to tangible vindication. The diversification thesis, once articulated as strategy, is now producing results.

“These results reflect the strength of our diversified business model and disciplined execution. We grew earnings, improved efficiency and strengthened our balance sheet while continuing to support customers and create value for shareholders.”, Ladi Balogun, Group Chief Executive, FCMB Group Plc

Revenue and Margins: The Interest Income Engine

Gross revenue for 2025 grew 42.5 per cent to N1.13 trillion, a milestone crossing of the trillion-naira threshold that crystallises just how far the Group has travelled. The primary driver was interest income, which expanded by 61.7 per cent, itself a product of a 17.3 per cent increase in earning assets, from N4.18 trillion to N4.90 trillion. In the context of Nigeria’s persistently high interest rate environment, the Group was well-positioned to harvest elevated yields across its loan book and fixed-income holdings.

Net interest income expanded by 124.5 per cent to N505.9 billion in 2025, compared with N225.3 billion in 2024. The net interest margin widened from 6.3 per cent to 9.5 per cent, a 320 basis point improvement that speaks to both asset repricing and a structural shift in funding costs. By the first quarter of 2026, the margin had expanded further still, to 10.7 per cent, suggesting the repricing cycle has not yet run its course.

In the first quarter of 2026, gross revenue rose 26.7 per cent to N320.2 billion from N252.7 billion in the same period of 2025, a rate of growth that, while moderating from the prior year’s pace, remains well above what most of the banking system is delivering.

Deposit Franchise: Low-Cost Funding Gains Ground

One of the more consequential structural developments embedded in these results is the improvement in FCMB’s funding mix. Current and savings account balances grew by N420.5 billion,  or 17 per cent, during 2025, and accelerated into the first quarter of 2026 with a further N433.5 billion,or 15 per cent, increase. The proportion of low-cost deposits in the total deposit base improved from 65.4 per cent to 71.1 per cent, a shift that will underpin margin resilience even as rates begin to moderate.

Total customer deposits rose 2.8 per cent in 2025 and a further 5.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2026. While the overall deposit growth is modest in absolute terms, the compositional shift toward current and savings balances is where the real strategic value lies, it lowers the Group’s cost of funds while deepening transactional relationships with its growing customer base.

Balance Sheet Expansion: Disciplined but Deliberate

Total assets grew 8.2 per cent to N7.63 trillion at the close of 2025 and advanced a further 4.4 per cent to N7.96 trillion by March 31, 2026, placing the Group on the cusp of the N8 trillion threshold. Management has consistently framed its balance sheet strategy around efficiency rather than volume maximisation, and the loan book reflects that discipline.

Loans and advances to customers grew by a restrained 0.4 per cent to N2.37 trillion in 2025, yet within that aggregate, consumer and small-business lending surged 24 per cent to N930 billion. This disaggregation is significant: the Group is consciously rotating its credit exposure toward higher-yielding retail segments while managing the overall book with caution, mindful of asset quality risks in a challenging macroeconomic environment.

Total loans and advances stood at N2.23 trillion at the end of the first quarter of 2026. Assets under management maintained a parallel growth trajectory, rising 24.2 per cent to N1.70 trillion at year-end 2025 and growing a further 10.1 per cent to N1.88 trillion by March 2026, as FCMB Pensions and FCMB Asset Management continued to gain market share.

Capital Strength and Shareholder Returns

The Group’s equity position has been substantially reinforced. Total equity grew 21.4 per cent to N835.4 billion at end-2025 and surged a further 36.5 per cent to N1.14 trillion by March 2026, supported by retained earnings and the Group’s 2025 public offer. The capital adequacy ratio stood at 26.95 per cent as of March 2026, well above regulatory minimums and providing ample headroom for continued balance sheet expansion and strategic investments.

FCMB Group has proposed a dividend of 35 kobo per share, a modest but symbolically important commitment to shareholders at a time when the Group is simultaneously investing in people, technology and business expansion. The cost-to-income ratio fell from 59.9 per cent to 53.8 per cent in 2025, a directional improvement that confirms the Group is not simply inflating revenues, but converting them into durable bottom-line gains.

For the wider Nigerian financial services landscape, FCMB’s 2025 scorecard reinforces several themes that have come to define this era of high-rate, post-recapitalisation banking: margin expansion is rewarding institutions with strong CASA franchises; capital raised in 2024 is now working; and diversification across banking, consumer finance, pensions and capital markets is proving its worth as a risk management and revenue-smoothing strategy.

FCMB Group enters 2026 with a balance sheet approaching N8 trillion, a first-quarter profit run-rate that implies an annual 2026 PBT above N300 billion if sustained, and a capital buffer that positions it to accelerate rather than consolidate. The question is no longer whether FCMB Group belongs in the same conversation as Nigeria’s biggest financial institutions. It increasingly does.