The global banking industry recorded net income of 1.3 trillion dollars in 2025, surpassing the previous year’s record of 1.2 trillion dollars and cementing its position as the highest net income earner of any industry, according to McKinsey and Company’s 2026 Global Banking Annual Review.

The report said net interest margins declined slightly from 1.65 percent globally in 2024 to 1.63 percent in 2025 as rates began to fall in major markets, but noted that several markets improved their margins. United States banks raised their net interest margin by nine basis points, Japanese banks by seven, and British banks by six. Banks in Brazil suffered a sharp decline, with margins falling from 3.55 percent to 2.93 percent. Balance sheet growth across deposits, loans, and assets under management accelerated to 6.5 percent in 2025, up from an average of 6.2 percent annually between 2020 and 2024.

The most significant challenge identified in the report was the rapid maturation of the fintech sector. McKinsey said fintechs, including neobanks such as Revolut and Nubank, had been an irritant to incumbent banks for two decades until 2025, when that irritation became something more acute. Across the combined revenues of the largest 1,000 banks and top 1,000 fintechs by valuation, fintechs’ share had grown from 10 percent in 2021 to 17 percent in 2025. Companies such as Chime, which recently reached profitability, and Robinhood, which joined the S&P 500 last year, were expanding from narrow product offerings into broad financial ecosystems.

The report identified four rising challenges to the banking industry’s most vital asset, the customer relationship: mature fintechs claiming industry revenue, neobanks that had broken through the growth and performance frontier, agentic artificial intelligence and digital assets including stablecoins, and a shift in customer trust toward new entrants.

McKinsey, which has maintained an active presence in Nigeria since 2002, had separately projected earlier in the year that Nigeria’s banking industry was on course for structural transformation that would lift market size to 16 billion dollars by 2030, driven by consolidation, digital expansion, and regulatory tightening.