First HoldCo to Share 60% of Annual Profit with Shareholders

First HoldCo has adopted a new plan to pay at least 60 percent of its annual profit as dividends.

The board of directors of the bank holding company made this decision at a meeting on Tuesday. They announced it in a regulatory filing on Thursday. This move shows that they want to give back to shareholders instead of keeping most of the profits to grow the business.

First HoldCo believes this decision reflects the directors’ faith in its ability to earn money, its strong capital position, better asset quality, diverse income sources, and solid prospects for continued profit and growth. This is good news for shareholders who did not receive dividends last financial year. It was the first time in many years that they went without dividends after a large provision for bad loans took away much of the cash meant for shareholders.

The financial institution has set aside ₦748.1 billion to handle bad loans for 2025. This comes after the Central Bank of Nigeria told banks to clean their balance sheets of bad loans from the Covid-19 period, following international best practices.

The profit for the year dropped to ₦147.3 billion from ₦663.5 billion after this provision.

Femi Otedola, the chairman of the banking group, said in January, "At First HoldCo, we decided to clean house properly. We took a huge one-time hit of ₦748 billion to admit old bad loans instead of pretending they do not exist."

He added, "That is why profit looks like it crashed by 92 percent. A painful headline, but it is a serious long-term move."

Regulatory issues also affected other banks like United Bank for Africa and Access Holdings, stopping them from paying dividends to shareholders for the 2025 financial year.

In the statement on Thursday, Mr Otedola said, "Over the last two years, we have undertaken difficult but necessary actions to strengthen governance, clean up the balance sheet, restore confidence, rebuild capital, and reposition the group for long-term growth."

He continued, "We are now beginning to see the benefits of those strategic decisions. As performance continues to improve across our businesses, it is only appropriate that our shareholders participate more directly in the value being created."

In the first half of 2026, revenue rose by 16.7 percent to ₦1.9 trillion. Pre-tax profit increased to ₦653.5 billion from ₦356.1 billion, while after-tax profit jumped to ₦526.3 billion from ₦283.8 billion.