First Bank’s 2025 Results Expose ₦826bn Impairment Nightmare, ₦60bn Mystery Float, And The Fintech Truth Nobody Is Speaking

Akahi News learnt that First HoldCo Plc, the parent company of First Bank of Nigeria, has published its FY2025 audited group financial statements — and beneath the headline-grabbing 70 per cent profit collapse lies a detailed map of where money is actually moving in Nigerian financial services, and where the risks are silently building.

The headline number is jarring: group profit fell from ₦677 billion in 2024 to ₦139.5 billion in 2025. But Akahi News gathered that for anyone paying attention to fintech, payments infrastructure, credit markets, and the evolving war between legacy banks and digital challengers, the real story is buried much deeper in the numbers.

It was alleged that four findings from the report stand out as seismic signals — and they should worry every fintech founder, every digital lender, and every Nigerian who has ever transferred money using a phone.

1. The Credit Crunch Has Arrived: ₦826 Billion Gone Up In Smoke

First Bank set aside ₦826.3 billion in impairment charges in 2025 — nearly double the ₦426.3 billion it provisioned the previous year. Akahi News had earlier reported that this near-doubling of loan-loss provisions, against a loan book that grew only marginally from ₦8.77 trillion to ₦8.97 trillion, is the most consequential signal in the entire filing.

Impairment charges represent the bank’s forward-looking estimate of loans that will never be repaid. When that estimate doubles in a single year, one of two things is happening — or both simultaneously. Either the borrowers the bank lent to in prior years are performing far worse than expected, or the bank’s default forecasting model is now recognising risks it previously understated.

Auditors specifically flagged the expected credit loss determination as a key audit matter, meaning they devoted elevated scrutiny to the assumptions behind those provisions. That is not routine. That is a warning light.

And here is the fintech implication that should keep digital lenders awake at night. Fintechs operating consumer lending products, buy-now-pay-later schemes, or SME credit facilities in Nigeria are lending into the exact same macroeconomic environment that is crushing First Bank’s book. They face the same inflation. The same foreign exchange chaos. The same income compression squeezing Nigerian households and businesses.

The entire ₦826 billion burden sat in commercial banking. The investment banking segment actually recorded a ₦2.2 billion impairment recovery. That tells you exactly where the stress is concentrated: mass-market and corporate lending — the same territory where most Nigerian fintechs with credit ambitions are building their castles. Will those castles hold, or are they built on sand?

2. Digital Fees Now Outrun The Bank’s Entire Profit — And That Is The Future

First Bank’s electronic banking fees reached ₦89.5 billion in 2025, up from ₦77 billion in 2024. Its funds transfer and intermediation fees grew from ₦46.6 billion to ₦65.8 billion — a 41 per cent leap. Combined, these two line items alone generated ₦155.3 billion in fee income from digital transaction infrastructure.

Group profit for the year was ₦139.5 billion. Read that again: the revenue generated by transaction infrastructure exceeded total profit. That is not a coincidence. It is a structural shift.

Net interest income — the traditional engine of bank profit — remains the largest line at ₦1.92 trillion before impairments. But credit losses and funding costs are aggressively eroding its contribution to bottom-line profit. Fee income from digital channels, by contrast, carries almost no credit risk. A transfer fee is earned the moment the transaction clears. No default risk. No provisioning. No exposure to the macroeconomic deterioration that is gutting the loan book.

This is the argument fintechs have been making for years. First Bank’s 2025 accounts now make the case in raw naira terms. The most defensible, high-margin, risk-adjusted revenue in Nigerian financial services is flowing through transaction infrastructure, not through credit. Every fintech building on payment rails — whether as a processor, a switching platform, a wallet provider, or an embedded finance layer — is competing for a share of a pool that is both large and growing.

But if digital fees are so profitable, why are so many fintechs still bleeding cash? That is the paradox the numbers cannot hide.

3. The ₦60 Billion Mystery: Something Moved Into First Bank’s Electronic Purse, And Nobody Is Explaining It

Buried deep in the deposits from customers’ notes is a figure that deserves far more attention than it will receive. Electronic purse deposits at First Bank grew from ₦5.4 billion at the end of 2024 to ₦65.4 billion at the end of 2025. That is a 12-fold increase in 12 months. Twelve times. One thousand one hundred and eleven per cent growth.

Electronic purse is a specific financial category for digital wallet balances and prepaid funds. Unlike standard savings or current accounts, these are “prepaid floats” where money is stored specifically for quick digital spending rather than traditional banking.

The financial statements report five categories separately. Electronic purse is the smallest in absolute terms — sitting alongside ₦5.71 trillion in current deposits, ₦4.63 trillion in savings, ₦3.27 trillion in term deposits, and ₦5.21 trillion in domiciliary accounts. But its growth rate is not comparable to any other category. Current deposits grew 16 per cent. Savings grew 11 per cent. Term deposits grew 38 per cent. Electronic purse grew 1,111 per cent.

Several explanations are plausible. A significant expansion of First Bank’s agent banking network in 2025 would generate float balances that could sit under the electronic purse classification before settlement. A new arrangement with a major payment service provider, routing float through First Bank’s balance sheet, would produce a similar result. A product integration with a mobile money operator or a bulk payment aggregator is another possibility.

But here is the question: why the deafening silence from auditors and management? If a fintech partnership is driving this growth, why is it not being celebrated? If it is internal, why is it not being explained? The mystery of the ₦60 billion float is a story waiting to be told — and whoever tells it first will understand something fundamental about where Nigeria’s digital payments are actually aggregating.

4. The 70% Profit Collapse Is Not What You Think — Read The Fine Print

When the dominant headline is a 70-79 per cent profit decline, the natural assumption is that the core business is collapsing. In First HoldCo’s case, that assumption requires significant qualification — and the qualification matters for how the fintech industry reads its own competitive position relative to legacy institutions.

Two things happened in 2025 that mechanically explain most of the profit decline. The first is the ₦400 billion increase in impairment charges already described. The second is a ₦706 billion swing in income from financial instruments measured at fair value through profit or loss.

In 2024, First Bank recorded a ₦549.9 billion gain on these instruments. In 2025, it recorded a ₦155.6 billion loss. That single accounting line moved from positive ₦550 billion to negative ₦156 billion in one year. A swing of more than ₦700 billion.

Financial instruments at fair value through profit or loss include trading securities, derivatives, and other market-sensitive assets. The ₦550 billion gain in 2024 was itself exceptional — driven substantially by the naira devaluation environment and elevated yields on government securities. Its reversal in 2025 is partly a function of those conditions normalising.

A bank whose profit swings by ₦700 billion because of fair value accounting is not the same as a bank whose operating business is deteriorating. The operating business evidence points the other way. Interest income grew 25 per cent from ₦2.40 trillion to ₦2.99 trillion. Fee and commission income grew 17 per cent from ₦304.5 billion to ₦357.5 billion. Customer deposits grew ₦1.71 trillion. Total assets crossed ₦27.25 trillion.

The commercial banking segment still generated ₦208.9 billion in pre-tax profit from continuing operations. The CBN penalised the group ₦344 million for regulatory contraventions — pocket change at this scale, but a reminder that compliance friction with the regulator persists.

For the fintech sector, this distinction matters deeply. The competitive narrative that has shaped Nigerian financial services for a decade rests on the premise that legacy bank fundamentals are structurally weakening while digital challengers grow. First Bank’s 2025 results do not support that narrative cleanly.

What they show is a large institution with growing transaction volumes, a stressed credit book, significant exposure to market volatility — operating alongside a fintech sector that faces the same credit stress, competes for the same transaction fees, and is increasingly dependent on the same payment infrastructure that First Bank helped build and continues to fund.

It is not a child’s play, this business of financial services transformation. The old giants are wounded, but they are not dead. And the new challengers are fast, but they are not yet profitable. The next three years will determine which model survives — or whether both will have to evolve into something neither has imagined yet.

Consider the ordinary Nigerian small business owner in Lagos who borrows from a fintech app to restock her shop. She does not care whether the impairment charge is from First Bank or a digital lender. She only cares that the loan arrives and her business survives. But if the credit environment is stressing even First Bank’s massive balance sheet, what hope does a fintech with a fraction of the capital have when the next economic shock hits?

Or think of the investor in London who poured money into Nigerian fintech at peak valuations. He is now watching First Bank’s impairment numbers and wondering if his portfolio companies are hiding similar loan-loss problems under the hood. Transparency, or the lack of it, will determine whether the next round of funding ever arrives.

The numbers from First Bank’s 2025 accounts are not just bank results. They are a diagnosis of the entire Nigerian financial ecosystem. The credit environment is deteriorating. Digital fees are the new gold. Something mysterious is happening with electronic purse deposits. And the 70 per cent profit collapse is largely an accounting illusion.

Read carefully. The truth is always in the fine print.

📌 Fact Summary Box (First Bank 2025 Results)

Group profit after tax: ₦139.5 billion (down from ₦677 billion in 2024 — ~79% decline).

Impairment charges (bad loan provisions): ₦826.3 billion (up from ₦426.3 billion — nearly doubled).

Electronic banking fees: ₦89.5 billion.

Funds transfer fees: ₦65.8 billion.

Total digital transaction fees: ₦155.3 billion (exceeds group profit of ₦139.5 billion).

Electronic purse deposits: ₦65.4 billion (up from ₦5.4 billion — 1,111% growth, 12x increase).

Total customer deposits: ₦18.88 trillion.

Total assets: ₦27.25 trillion.

Interest income: ₦2.99 trillion (up 25%).

CBN penalties paid: ₦344 million.

Key finding 1: Credit environment deteriorated sharply — fintechs lending into same stressed market.

Key finding 2: Digital transaction revenue now more valuable than total bank profit.

Key finding 3: ₦60 billion mystery float in electronic purse — unexplained.

Key finding 4: 70% profit collapse largely due to ₦706 billion accounting swing in fair value instruments, not core business failure.

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Akahi News will continue tracking Nigeria’s fintech evolution and the financial forces shaping the nation’s economy. Stay with us. Stay financially literate. And remember: when the headlines scream profit collapse, always read the notes to the accounts.