In 2025, Meezan has a banner year… again

Meezan Bank has a habit of making even its “down” years look like someone else’s boom. The country’s biggest Islamic lender ended 2025 with deposits crossing Rs3.30 trillion – up 28% from Rs2.58 trillion a year earlier – at a time when the broader banking system’s deposit growth was closer to the high-teens.

And yet, the headline profit number went the other way. Profit after tax (PAT) slipped to Rs89.0 billion from Rs101.5 billion in 2024, while earnings per share (EPS) fell to Rs49.54 from Rs56.62. Total income also declined – Rs285.1 billion in 2025 versus Rs315.9 billion in 2024 – underscoring an awkward truth about Pakistani banking: in a falling-rate cycle, even a bank that is hoovering up deposits can find its revenue engine losing torque.

That combination – deposit momentum that screams “market share gains”, alongside profits that suggest a tougher operating climate – sets up the real story of Meezan’s 2025. It was a year of franchise strength, but also a reminder that banking is, at heart, a repricing business: what you earn on assets moves faster than what you pay on liabilities, until it doesn’t.

In its year-end results announcement, Meezan framed 2025 as another year of “sustainable value” creation, pointing to a return on equity of 34% – still an eye-catching number for a bank of its size. The deposit milestone is the simplest proof point of the bank’s continuing gravitational pull. Deposits rising almost 28% in a single year is not just “growth”; it is growth that typically shows up when customers are switching primary relationships, payroll accounts, trade flows and business collections.