Access and First HoldCo Executive Pay has risen sharply despite uneven profit growth.
NewsOnline Nigeria reports that the executive remuneration at First HoldCo, formerly FBN Holdings, and Access Holdings rose sharply in 2025, even as the two banking groups faced very different earnings pressures, raising fresh questions about the widening gap between top management pay and returns generated for shareholders.
The sharpest disconnect was recorded at First HoldCo, where the remuneration of the highest-paid director more than doubled to ₦195 million from ₦97 million, even as the group’s profit for the year collapsed by 79.4 per cent to ₦139.5 billion from ₦677 billion.
The figures are contained in First HoldCo’s audited 2025 financial statements.
The contrast is particularly striking because First HoldCo’s top-line performance did not deteriorate. Gross earnings actually increased 6.9 per cent to ₦3.44 trillion, while net interest income jumped 36.8 per cent to ₦1.92 trillion.
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What eroded the bottom line was a sharp increase in costs, particularly impairment charges, which surged 93.8 per cent to ₦826.3 billion, while operating expenses rose 32.1 per cent to ₦1.23 trillion. Profit before tax consequently plunged 70.5 per cent to ₦235 billion.
Against that backdrop, the doubling of the highest-paid director’s remuneration presents a difficult question for shareholders; why did executive pay increase so dramatically in a year when the group’s profit available to shareholders fell by almost four-fifths?
First HoldCo’s broader compensation figures add to the concern.
Total directors’ emoluments increased to ₦992 million from ₦936 million, while executive compensation rose to ₦294 million from ₦159 million.
Key management compensation, covering executive directors and members of the management committee, almost doubled to ₦8.92 billion from ₦4.76 billion.
Salaries and other short-term employee benefits increased to ₦8.41 billion from ₦4.46 billion.
The earnings deterioration was also reflected in the group’s return metrics. Post-tax return on average equity fell to 4.6 per cent from 29.8 per cent, while return on average assets dropped to 0.5 per cent from 3.1 per cent.
The group’s non-performing loan ratio also increased to 12 per cent from 10.2 per cent.
The Access Holdings numbers tell a different but still notable story.
Access Holdings reported a record ₦1.007 trillion profit before tax in 2025, up 16.16 per cent from ₦867.02 billion, while profit after tax increased 15.7 per cent to about ₦743 billion. Gross earnings rose 13.3 per cent to ₦5.53 trillion.
But the remuneration of its highest-paid director increased by 62.8 per cent to ₦293 million from ₦180 million.
That means the highest-paid director’s remuneration expanded at roughly four times the pace of the group’s profit-after-tax growth.
The gap becomes even more striking when Access Holdings’ overall employee costs are considered.
The group paid ₦459.8 billion in salaries and wages in 2025, up 28.57 per cent from ₦357.62 billion in 2024, according to analysis of its audited accounts. The wage bill represented 8.32 per cent of gross earnings.
Access Holdings had 9,960 employees during the year, with 764 employees, or 7.7 per cent of its workforce, falling within the disclosed salary band above ₦45.3 million annually.
The executive-pay figures therefore sit against a broader increase in personnel costs at a time when Nigerian banks are operating under heightened pressure to improve efficiency, manage credit risks and generate adequate returns on expanded shareholder capital.
Access’s record profit also requires context. Its 2025 performance benefited significantly from growth in interest and non-interest income, including a substantial increase in fair-value and foreign-exchange gains. At the same time, impairment charges increased sharply during the year, reflecting continued credit-risk pressures.
For shareholders, the issue is not simply how much an individual executive earns, but whether the pace of compensation growth is sufficiently connected to sustainable improvements in profitability, efficiency, asset quality and shareholder returns.
The First HoldCo figures make that question particularly difficult to ignore.
The group increased the remuneration of its highest-paid director by 101 per cent in a year when profit fell 79.4 per cent. At Access, the highest-paid director’s remuneration rose 62.8 per cent while profit after tax increased 15.7 per cent.
The two cases are not identical. Access delivered stronger earnings growth, while First HoldCo underwent a major balance-sheet reset that resulted in significantly higher impairment charges. Compensation structures can also incorporate responsibilities, incentives, longer-term performance targets and other factors that are not captured by a single year’s profit figure.
However, the divergence between executive remuneration and bottom-line performance provides investors with a significant governance metric to scrutinise.
First HoldCo itself describes 2025 as a year of balance-sheet restructuring and says the business recorded strong core interest-income growth despite the large impairment charge.
The bigger question is whether shareholders should assess executive rewards primarily against revenue growth and strategic milestones or against the actual earnings and returns ultimately delivered to them.
With Nigerian banks having undergone a major recapitalisation exercise, the question has become even more important. Larger capital bases place greater expectations on management to generate sustainable returns rather than simply expand balance sheets.
For First HoldCo shareholders, the 2025 accounts present a particularly stark picture; ₦3.44 trillion in gross earnings, ₦139.5 billion in profit and ₦195 million paid to the highest-paid director.
For Access Holdings, the picture is more profitable but still raises questions about proportionality: ₦5.53 trillion in gross earnings, about ₦743 billion in profit after tax and ₦293 million for its highest-paid director.
Neither set of figures, on its own, establishes that the remuneration was inappropriate. But the numbers make executive compensation an increasingly important issue for investors assessing whether the benefits of Nigeria’s banking-sector growth are being distributed in line with the financial results delivered to shareholders.
