The growth logic of city commercial banks is changing, and the latest performance report for the year 2025 disclosed by Xiamen Bank is a highly representative sample.
On January 27, Xiamen Bank delivered a report card of &#34;compensating quantity with price&#34; —
By the end of 2025, the bank's total assets reached 453.099 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.11%, with the total amount of loans and advances growing even more aggressively, up 18.39% year-on-year;
At the same time, the bank achieved total operating income of 5.856 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 1.69%, and net profit attributable to the parent company reached 2.634 billion yuan, an increase of 1.52%.
<img src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://wpimg-wscn.awtmt.com/f03062ae-6049-49bd-861e-c2550cc2d6d9.png?x-oss-process=image/auto-orient,1/interlace,1/resize,w_1440,h_1440/quality,q_95/format,jpg" alt="" original-src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://wpimg-wscn.awtmt.com/f03062ae-6049-49bd-861e-c2550cc2d6d9.png"/>
In contrast to the double-digit expansion of asset scale, revenue and profit growth are in single digits.
From the perspective of scale indicators, Xiamen Bank's willingness to expand remains strong. In the current macro environment where overall credit demand is relatively weak, a credit growth rate close to 20% is rare among listed banks, indicating the bank's strong investment efforts on the asset side.
However, the rapid expansion of the balance sheet has not been proportionately transmitted to the income statement.
When the asset growth rate is more than six times the revenue growth rate, the trend of diluted return on assets is evident, confirming the widespread challenge of narrowing interest margins faced by the banking industry. Xiamen Bank has to maintain weak profit growth by enlarging the denominator (asset scale).
At the same time, the bank's provision coverage ratio has seen a significant decline.
By the end of 2025, Xiamen Bank's provision coverage ratio was 312.63%. Although this absolute value remains relatively high in the industry, it has significantly decreased by 79.32 percentage points compared to the same period last year.
Generally speaking, there are two scenarios in which banks lower their provision coverage ratios: one is a significant improvement in asset quality, which not only does not require additional provisions but can also release some provisions to boost profits; the other is excessive pressure on the revenue side, forcing the bank to adjust by reducing provisions or reversing provisions to maintain positive net profit growth.
Considering asset quality, Xiamen Bank's situation seems closer to the latter.
By the end of 2025, the bank's non-performing loan ratio was 0.77%, a slight increase of 0.03 percentage points compared to the end of the previous year. Against the backdrop of a non-improving or slightly rising non-performing ratio, the cliff-like drop in the provision coverage ratio may indicate that, under the common pressure of narrowing interest margins in the industry, the bank has chosen to accelerate the consumption of its internal &#34;surplus.&#34;
In addition, the &#34;scissors gap&#34; between the growth rates of deposits and loans at Xiamen Bank is widening.
During the reporting period, the total deposits of the bank grew by 13.75%, nearly 5 percentage points lower than the loan growth rate, and the proportion of loans to total assets increased by 3.31 percentage points compared to the end of the previous year;
This model of consuming liquidity to exchange for asset scale will pose challenges to capital adequacy and liquidity management in the long run.
Overall, Xiamen Bank's 2025 performance report reveals the typical struggles of small and medium-sized banks during a period of narrowing interest margins:
On one hand, it is necessary to rely on the rapid expansion of asset scale to hedge against the decline in interest margins; on the other hand, it is unavoidable to consume provisioning resources to maintain profit growth.
For investors, it is important to focus on the trend of net interest margin and the composition of non-interest income when the annual report is officially disclosed

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The growth logic of urban commercial banks is changing, and the latest performance report for 2025 disclosed by XIAMEN BANK is a highly representative sample.
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XIAMEN BANK's revenue and net profit both increased, with loans growing by over 18%