Consolidated Hallmark Holdings weathered a turbulent first quarter of 2026 and still came out strong, tripling its after-tax profit to N20.3 billion.
The earnings performance of the insurance holding company has seen wide swings in recent years, and this year is strongly on an upward trend so far. The company’s financial report for the first quarter ended March 2026 shows a big rebound from a profit plunge in 2025 to the biggest quarterly profit in its record.
Group profit had slumped from N22.6 billion in the 2024 full year to N8.4 billion at the end of 2025 but surged up to three times the corresponding quarter’s figure of N6.6 billion at the end of March 2026.
The company’s volatile profits stem from unpredictable fluctuations in both income and expenses. Key revenue streams and insurance costs vary erratically year to year.
How the fluctuating costs and incomes cancel out or outweigh each other defines the profit performance for the year. This year, rising incomes take the lead over rising costs and disappointing earnings to the fattening of the bottom line.
The biggest upswing in earnings in the first quarter came from net fair value gains on financial assets that rebounded from net fair value losses of N2.85 billion in the same period in 2025 to N18.4 billion. This is the pivot of the company’s exceptional profit delivery for the quarter.
At the end of 2025, net fair value gains on financial assets had plunged from N16 billion in 2024 to N2.9 billion.
Another big leap in earnings happened in respect of interest income, which rose by over 96 per cent year-on-year to about N1.8 billion.
Conversely, insurance revenue declined significantly from over N43 billion to N11.7 billion. Additionally, other operating income shifted from a N98 million gain to an approximately N942 million loss during the review period.
Also, other investment income went down from over N8 million to slightly over N1 million year-on-year at the end of the quarter.
Countering some of the revenue disappointments is a major drop in insurance service expenses that fell from N32.6 billion in the same period last year to less than N7 billion in the first quarter. Yet, net insurance service result dropped from N10.7 billion to N4 billion during the review period.
The company is on the reverse path of last year’s performance when insurance service result multiplied more than twice from N3 billion to nearly N7 billion.
Cost saving was also extracted from income tax expense that dropped from N1.5 billion to N900.5 million year-on-year at the close of the first quarter.
Rising costs that tempered cost savings include net foreign exchange losses that soared from insignificance to over N321 million. Reinsurance expenses also rose from zero record to about N633 million over the period.
Other operating expenses grew by 142 percent year-on-year to about N1.9 billion while net credit impairment losses stood in excess of N19 million against zero record in the same period last year.
The big upturn in net fair value on financial assets and the strong growth in interest earnings powered a rebound in investment result from a loss of N1.8 billion to a gain of roughly N19 billion over the review period.
The upturn in investment result more than compensated for the drop in insurance service result, leading to an outstanding growth in net income from N8 billion to N21 billion over the period. This is an upswing from a drop of 56.5 percent in net income to N10 billion at the end of 2025.
The company closed the first quarter with earnings per share advancing from 77 kobo in the same period last year to N1.86. It closed the 2025 full year with earnings per share of 77 kobo and is giving out 15 kobo per share to shareholders in cash dividend.
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