Annual Report 2025
Delivering caring banking so our customers can make the most of life’s opportunities.
2025: Building the foundations for sustainable, profitable growth
Vanquis Banking Group returned to profitability, strengthened its balance sheet and advanced its strategic priorities. Backed by strong credit quality, disciplined cost control, and continued transformation, the Group delivered accelerated growth in interest-earning balances, strengthening its platform for long-term value creation. With a clear strategy, focused execution and an experienced leadership team, Vanquis is creating enduring value for customers, colleagues and shareholders.
Hear from our Chief Executive, Ian McLaughlin
Financial performance
Disciplined strategic execution in 2025 meant the Group was able to deploy capital to deliver accelerated balance growth, while returning to profitability. This resulted in gross customer interest earning balances increasing 22% to £2,824m.
The Group delivered a statutory profit before tax from continuing operations of £8.3m and a statutory return on tangible equity of 2.3%.
The Group optimised its capital structure through a successful Additional Tier 1 (AT1) issuance, which enabled the accelerated growth in interest earning balances.
Net interest margin reduced 1.7% to 16.8% as planned, driven by the mix effect of growing lower-risk, lower-margin Second Charge Mortgages.
Performance was supported by strong credit quality, with customers demonstrating financial resilience.
Management have continued to demonstrate strong cost discipline, delivering £28.8m of transformation cost savings in 2025.
The transformation of Vanquis continues to be delivered and the Group has a credible pathway to deliver low double-digit Return on Tangible Equity in 2026 and mid-teens ROTE in 2027.
A quick glance at our year in numbers:
Statutory ROTE
2.3%
FY24: (32.1)%
Net Interest Margin
16.8%
FY24: 18.5%
Cost Income
58.4%
FY24: 89.4%
Common Equity Tier 1 ratio
16.5%
FY24: 18.8%
Sir Peter Estlin, Chairman
“In 2025 the Group returned to statutory profitability, strengthened its balance sheet and delivered accelerated, disciplined growth. Vanquis now serves more than 1.7 million customers and is building a purpose-led, technology-enabled bank with increasing resilience and scale.”
Ian McLaughlin, CEO
“Disciplined delivery of our strategy in 2025 enabled us to deploy available capital to deliver accelerated balance growth while returning to statutory profitability. We strengthened the balance sheet, improved credit quality and made significant progress in our transformation, laying the foundations for long-term scalability and efficiency.”
Purpose, ambition and strategy
Vanquis Banking Group is a specialist bank with a strong social purpose, focused on widening access to credit for customers underserved by mainstream lenders
- Our purpose: To deliver caring banking so our customers can make the most of life’s opportunities.
- Our ambition: To be the UK’s most trusted and inclusive specialist bank by unlocking financial opportunity for underserved customers and helping them thrive.
- Our strategy: Serve More, Serve Responsibly, Scale Profitably.
Our strategy guides how we deliver on our purpose and ambition, balancing wider access to credit with strong customer outcomes, disciplined risk management and sustainable returns.
Serve More
Widen access to healthy, affordable credit for customers underserved elsewhere and deepen long-term customer relationships.
Serve Responsibly
Ensure strong affordability, disciplined risk management and consistently good customer outcomes across credit cycles.
Scale Profitably
Build a modern, efficient and scalable digital bank that converts growth into sustainable, risk-adjusted returns.
Strategic themes underpinning our strategy
How our strategy creates value
Our strategy creates value by combining customer insight, disciplined risk management, operational efficiency and modern technology to deliver responsible customer outcomes, resilient shareholder returns, meaningful work and opportunities for colleagues, and greater financial inclusion across the UK.
Read more about our strategy and business model on pages 14-17 of our Annual Report.
Sustainability
Our purpose to deliver caring banking so that our customers can make the most of life’s opportunities is supported by our sustainability strategy. The strategy is organised around four key priorities and is underpinned by our commitment to act with integrity, responsibility and high ethical standards in everything we do.
Customers
Helping our customers to be financially included through the provision of responsible and sustainable products and services.
Colleagues
Maintaining an inclusive workplace culture that is safe, engaging and provides opportunities for growth and development.
Community
Supporting the communities we serve by supporting financial and social inclusion and improving numeracy and employability skills.
Environment
Minimising our impact on the environment and working with others to act on the issue of climate change.
Ian McLaughlin, CEO
“A clear and strong purpose is fundamental to the long-term success of our business. It guides our decision-making processes and ensures we deliver simple, affordable and flexible products that meet customers’ needs and support financial inclusion. It also shapes how we work with partners in the communities we serve, how we create an inclusive workplace, and how we seek to minimise our impact on the environment.”
Customers
Supporting the financial inclusion of our customers is at the heart of what Vanquis does. We do this by offering a range of credit cards, saving products, specialist vehicle finance, second charge mortgages through our partners, and free, easy-to-use money management support via the Snoop app. We also understand that financial inclusion means being there for customers when health issues, financial instability or major life events affect their ability to manage their finances.
Colleagues
We are committed to being an employer of choice and creating a workplace where people feel valued, empowered and inspired to grow together. By fostering an inclusive workplace culture, we can attract and retain the best people and build a sustainable pipeline of engaged and diverse colleagues who can innovate and develop the products and services our customers need now and in the future.
Communities
We believe Vanquis has an important role to play in having a positive impact in the communities we serve. This is why we established the Vanquis Foundation almost three years ago. Through the Foundation, we aim to improve the lives of children and young people by providing better access to education, social and financial inclusion, and economic development opportunities in the places where our customers live and work.
Environment
Our environmental strategy focuses on integrating climate-related risks into our business planning and decision making. This includes operational resilience, customer service, supply chain management and, where appropriate, capital allocation. Climate-related risks are identified, assessed, managed and monitored in line with our risk management and internal control framework.
For more information and our full 2025 climate-related financial disclosure, see pages 33 to 43 of the Annual Report.
Past reports
Here you can find a historic look back at our annual reports. Want to go further back? See our Results, Reports and Presentations where we keep a vast library.