Citigroup Investment Banking Fees Jump 20% as Full-Year Profit Climbs

The Tip Desk · August 2, 2026 · 3 min read

Citigroup's full-year 2025 net income rose to $14.3 billion on revenue of $85.2 billion, up from $12.7 billion on $80.7 billion in 2024, as Banking and Markets carried the result.

Citigroup (C) closed out 2025 with investment banking fees up 20% to $4.6 billion, from $3.9 billion in 2024, powered by a 53% surge in advisory fees that outran a roughly flat equity capital markets business. The gain flowed straight through to the Banking segment, where net income more than doubled the prior year's pace, rising 53% to $2.3 billion, with return on tangible common equity climbing 430 basis points to 11.3% on strength in corporate lending and investment banking.

Markets revenue added to the case, growing 11% to $22.0 billion from $19.8 billion in 2024, with fixed income up 10% and equities up 13%; segment RoTCE improved 250 basis points to 11.6%. Services revenue rose 8% to $21.3 billion, and its RoTCE improved 260 basis points to 28.6% on growth in Treasury and Trade Solutions and Securities Services. Consumer banking told a similar story of margin expansion: USPB net income more than doubled to $3.1 billion from $1.4 billion in 2024, a 124% increase, as the unit swung to a net allowance-for-credit-losses release of $225 million versus a $1.0 billion build the year before. Wealth net income rose 49% to $1.5 billion, with RoTCE up 450 basis points to 12.1% on higher deposit spreads in Citigold and Private Bank.

Balance-sheet growth underpinned the segment gains. End-of-period loans grew 8% year-over-year to $752 billion and average loans grew 7% to $737 billion, led by Markets, USPB and Services, while Banking loans declined. Deposits grew even faster: end-of-period deposits rose 9% to roughly $1.4 trillion and average deposits grew 8% to about $1.4 trillion, driven by higher average balances in Services.

For the fourth quarter alone, revenue of $19.9 billion rose 2% versus the same period in 2024, with growth in Banking, Services, USPB and Wealth offset partly by a decline in All Other; stripping out a Russia-related held-for-sale loss tied to AO Citibank, the quarter's revenue was up 8%. That one-time charge also weighed on the quarter's efficiency ratio, which worsened to 69.6% from 67.1% a year earlier, even as the full-year efficiency ratio improved 170 basis points to 64.7% from 66.4% in 2024 on a 3% rise in expenses to $55.1 billion, tied to compensation, legal costs and technology spend that were only partly offset by productivity savings.

Capital returned to shareholders totaled about $17.6 billion for the year, including roughly $13 billion in buybacks, the most since the pandemic; the fourth quarter alone accounted for about $5.6 billion of that total. The pace of returns pulled down the CET1 capital ratio to 13.2% at year-end from 13.6% a year earlier and from 13.3% in the prior quarter, as repurchases and dividends outpaced net income accretion.

Credit quality showed some fraying beneath the headline growth. Total non-accrual loans rose 35% versus the prior-year period to $3.6 billion, with corporate non-accruals up 45% to $2.0 billion on idiosyncratic downgrades in Banking and Services and consumer non-accruals up 24% to $1.6 billion. Full-year provision for credit losses rose a modest 2% to $10.3 billion from $10.1 billion in 2024, though the fourth quarter's provision fell 14% year-over-year to $2.2 billion from $2.6 billion. The reserve-to-funded-loans ratio slipped to 2.6% from 2.7% a year earlier even as total allowance for credit losses on loans rose to about $19.2 billion from $18.6 billion.

The combination of rising non-accruals against a thinning reserve cushion sets up credit quality as the metric worth watching into the next reporting cycle, even as fee income and capital markets activity carried the year's result.