Access Holdings Plc reported profit before tax of N1.01 trillion for the financial year ended December 31, 2025, figures published as part of its access holdings q1 2026 results show, even as the group booked sharply higher impairment charges.
Innocent C. Ike, the group’s chief executive, framed the numbers as proof of the franchise’s resilience and said the bank is shifting emphasis toward returns and earnings quality after a period of scale-driven growth.
The headline jump in profit — up 16.2 per cent from N867.02 billion in 2024 — sits beside a dramatic rise in provisions. Access declared a net impairment charge on financial assets of N523.55 billion in 2025, roughly 113 per cent higher than the N245.32 billion booked in 2024. Net impaired charges on financial assets increased to about N523 billion from N245 billion the prior year, and total impaired loans rose to N468.04 billion from N368.22 billion.
Those impairment numbers arrived against strong balance-sheet expansion. Total assets increased by 24.3 per cent to N51.57 trillion, while customer deposits surged 53.4 per cent to N34.56 trillion. Shareholders’ funds climbed 15 per cent to N4.33 trillion. On the revenue side, net interest income rose to N1.36 trillion and net fees and commission income grew by 40.9 per cent to N585.1 billion, helping overall operating income after impairment to advance 23.9 per cent to N3.17 trillion.
Operational efficiency improved too: the group’s cost-to-income ratio fell to 51.7 per cent from 56.7 per cent in 2024. Return metrics show return on average equity of 18.4 per cent and return on average assets of 1.6 per cent for 2025.
The broader context is regulatory and sector-wide. The Central Bank of Nigeria required banks to exit the regulatory forbearance loan window and fully align with prudential loan classification standards, pressuring lenders to clean up books. A compilation by THISDAY showed nine banks declared N3.2 trillion in loan loss provisions in 2025 — about 40 per cent higher than the N2.33 trillion recorded in 2024 — underscoring that Access’s higher impairments are part of an industry-wide push to shore up asset quality.
There is a tension in the numbers. Access’s total impaired loans increased in absolute terms to N468.04 billion, but the ratio of impaired loans to gross risk assets edged lower to 2.68 per cent from 2.76 per cent in 2024. The falling ratio reflects the much larger asset base rather than a drop in problem exposures, and it helps explain how the group can report stronger returns alongside ballooning provisions. In short: growth has outpaced the rise in non-performing exposures but has not eliminated the need for significantly higher provisioning.
Ike told investors that the 2025 results reflect the strength of the institution and said the group has entered a “more deliberate optimisation phase,” with a stronger focus on returns on capital, earnings quality and long-term value creation. That shift is visible in the mix of higher fee income, improved cost efficiency and a decision to take large, upfront impairment charges rather than spread them out.
The next test for Access will be whether the optimisation phase delivers sustained improvement in earnings quality without further large hits to capital or shareholder returns. The group’s stronger income lines and improved cost-to-income ratio give it room to absorb provisioning, but the scale of impairment charges across the sector — N3.2 trillion reported by nine banks in 2025 — means any further deterioration in asset quality could force additional provision rounds.
For now, the balance-sheet expansion, higher deposits and a N1.01 trillion profit before tax give Access a plausible path to deliver the returns its management now prioritises. The crucial unanswered question is whether those returns will be driven by genuine improvement in credit quality or merely by continued balance-sheet growth that outpaces problems on paper.
