Welcome to the Kuwait listed banks’ results H1’25, our half yearly analysis of Kuwait’s nine listed commercial banks’ financial performance to project the outlook of the country’s banking sector.
This report is a continuation, and the second edition, of our yearly Kuwait-focused banking report which was published in April ’25.
In this report, we offer a comparative analysis of Kuwait’s nine listed commercial banks’ financial performances in half-year ending June 2025 and half-year ending June 2024. This analysis is based on the eight key performance indicators (KPIs) that we have identified to demonstrate Kuwait’s banks’ financial performance.
They are: (1) total assets; (2) net profit; (3) share price; (4) return on equity; (5) return on assets; (6) cost-to-income ratio; (7) loan by stage; and (8) non-performing loan ratio.
The Half Yearly Report
In H1’25, Kuwait’s banking industry witnessed an year-on-year (y-o-y) growth in terms of total assets and net profit, with the country average increase in total assets across banks reaching 10.39% (y-o-y) and net profit climbing to 3.63%.
It is important to note that banks in Kuwait have been placing a sharper focus on cost management for the past few years, leveraging digitalization and other tools/methodologies at their disposal. As a result, four out of nine banks saw a decrease in cost-to-income ratio in H1’25, as compared to H1’24.
The biggest shift in H1’25 compared to H1’24, however, was in terms of overall share prices where every bank marked a double-digit increase, moving the country average to a whopping 22.13% from the same time last year.
