The period of effortless earnings is definitively over for the online loan facilitation sector. By early April 2026, seven listed internet-based loan facilitation platforms, including Qifu Technology, LexinFintech Holdings Ltd., FinVolution Group, Jiayin Group Inc., X Financial, Yiren Digital Ltd., and Weicai China, had all released their full-year 2025 financial reports. While the overall performance for the year appeared stable, a widespread downturn emerged in the fourth quarter, characterized by significant declines in both revenue and net profit, indicating a concentrated release of profit pressures. The immediate catalyst for this shift was the formal implementation of the new loan facilitation regulations in October 2025. Centered on principles of a "whitelist system, cost transparency, and independent risk control," the new rules prompted banks to massively scale back their loan facilitation partnerships, forcing most platforms to adopt a more cautious operational stance and proactively reduce their scale. A more fundamental reason lies in the industry's progression into a phase of competition for existing market share, marked by severe homogenization, rising customer acquisition costs, and a depletion of internal growth drivers. Even without regulatory intervention, the market had reached a critical juncture requiring adjustment. Currently, the operational logic for loan facilitation platforms is shifting from prioritizing scale to emphasizing quality and efficiency. The domestic market must adapt to the reality of a "contracted volume and refined operations." While overseas expansion has become an industry consensus, its viability as a stable growth driver remains uncertain, presenting the sector with a new set of developmental challenges.
Profitability divergence intensified in the fourth quarter, with the entire sector facing pressure. An analysis of the full-year 2025 financial reports indicates a generally stable operational trend for loan facilitation platforms, with most achieving either revenue growth or minor declines. Although LexinFintech's revenue scale decreased by 7.4% compared to the previous year, it remained at the tens of billions level. X Financial led its peers with a year-on-year growth rate exceeding 30%. The profit side, however, showed clear divergence, with scenarios of steady growth, revenue increases without corresponding profit growth, and substantial losses coexisting. Adjusted profits for most platforms remained positive, with LexinFintech and Jiayin Group even reporting surges of approximately 50% year-on-year. A minority of institutions saw profits contract sharply due to provisions set aside for potential losses or business restructuring. Qifu Technology and X Financial found themselves in a situation of "revenue growth but profit decline." Yiren Digital's net profit plummeted by 97.44% year-on-year, while Weicai China emerged as the only platform to report a net loss. The core issue behind the difficulty in translating revenue growth into profit is the industry-wide adjustment pain triggered by the new regulations. Requirements such as the whitelist management and cost transparency led to a concentrated exposure of default risks across the sector and a sharp increase in cash flow pressure. The severe adjustments among mid-tier platforms further confirm the pressured state of the industry. Some previously stable and profitable platforms quickly turned from profit to loss following the new rules, with their valuations shrinking significantly, revealing the underlying contradiction of a "superficially stable yet internally stressed" industry. A typical example is the case of Fenbi's operator, Cashbus Technology. In the fourth quarter of 2025, Cashbus Technology reported a massive quarterly loss of 684 million yuan, triggering its major shareholder, Focus Media Group, to book over 2.5 billion yuan in asset impairment, ultimately leading to the complete divestiture of its 54.97% stake for 791 million yuan. Listed loan facilitation platforms generally experienced year-on-year declines in both revenue and net profit in the fourth quarter, with some platforms seeing quarterly losses reach record highs. Core business revenues, such as loan facilitation service fees and credit facilitation income, shrank substantially. Both capital-intensive and capital-light businesses suffered setbacks, fully manifesting the industry's phase of adjustment pain. For instance, FinVolution Group's domestic loan transaction volume in the fourth quarter was 38.7 billion yuan, down 28.3% year-on-year; its net profit was 416 million yuan, a significant decrease of 39.0% year-on-year. The company explicitly attributed this to the proactive contraction of its domestic business and changes in the regulatory environment. LexinFintech's fourth-quarter revenue was 3.043 billion yuan, down 16.8% year-on-year; its net profit was 214 million yuan, a sharp decline of 41% year-on-year and 13.1% quarter-on-quarter. Revenue from its major credit facilitation business was 2.485 billion yuan, down 8.4% year-on-year, primarily due to lower off-balance-sheet loan interest rates and a reduction in issuance volume. Within this, loan facilitation and service fee income decreased from 1.624 billion yuan to 1.293 billion yuan. Qifu Technology had the smallest full-year revenue decline, but its fourth-quarter net profit was 1.016 billion yuan, down 46.89% year-on-year. Affected by the reduction in facilitation scale, its capital-intensive loan facilitation service fees in the fourth quarter fell sharply by 44.82% year-on-year and 61.02% quarter-on-quarter; capital-light service fees plunged 61.39% year-on-year, with the quarter-on-quarter decline partially offset by volume growth. Jiayin Group maintained strong growth through the first three quarters, with cumulative revenue exceeding 5.1 billion yuan and net profit over 1.4 billion yuan. However, it rapidly contracted in the fourth quarter, with quarterly revenue of only 1.09 billion yuan, down 22.4% year-on-year, and net profit plummeting to 101 million yuan, a quarter-on-quarter drop of 73.17%.
Contraction becomes mainstream as risks escalate. The implementation of the new loan facilitation regulations was undoubtedly the most significant variable impacting the industry in 2025. Banks widely tightened their loan facilitation whitelists, shifting from a "broad net" approach to "prudent selection of the best." By the end of October 2025, 119 financial institutions had disclosed their loan facilitation partnership whitelists. The number of partner institutions plummeted from several thousand pre-regulation to just over 500, with ongoing dynamic removal of non-compliant entities. Consequently, the industry's profit margins were substantially compressed, and business scale contracted rapidly, making layoffs and cost reduction a common phenomenon across the sector. In response to rising risks, most platforms successively tightened entry thresholds and shifted towards prudent operations. In the fourth quarter of 2025, except for LexinFintech and Weicai China (which did not disclose figures), the loan issuance volume of other platforms fell by more than 20% year-on-year, indicating the industry's entry into an active volume reduction and adjustment cycle. Most platforms exhibited a trend of "dual decline" in volume and outstanding balance. Among them, LexinFintech had the smallest decrease in issuance volume but the largest drop in outstanding balance, possibly due to its installment mall business and a high proportion of small-amount consumer credit loans, leading to faster balance contraction. Yiren Digital and Jiayin Group were exceptions. Yiren Digital's loan balance in the fourth quarter increased by 15.32% year-on-year. Jiayin Group, as usual, did not disclose its loan balance, but according to a report from the WeChat public account "A Fintech Goose," its loan balance at the end of 2025 was approximately 75 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 25%. Furthermore, the company's financial report also noted an increase in the average outstanding loan balance for which it provides guarantee services. Alongside business contraction and compliance rectification, industry-wide risk metrics generally trended upwards in the fourth quarter of 2025, with asset quality pressures gradually becoming apparent. However, this does not signify a sudden deterioration in asset quality but rather the gradual exposure of risks that were previously masked by high interest rates, now visible under the compliance framework. With the era of maintaining high profits through wide interest rate spreads definitively over, operating with thin margins and controllable risks has become the new normal. Platforms must establish sustainable profit models centered on risk control to adapt to the market environment of lower interest rates and stricter regulation.
Seeking new growth avenues: Overseas expansion and cryptocurrency. In recent years, the loan facilitation business expanded rapidly driven by traffic and technology but quickly fell into a trap of homogeneous competition. The growth model reliant on high interest rates and extensive methods is no longer sustainable. Simultaneously, regulatory direction has fully shifted towards standardization, contraction, and sustainability. The industry must adapt to a "smaller" loan facilitation market, focusing on depth, quality, efficiency, and resilience—a move aimed at addressing long-standing compliance irregularities. For a long time, some loan facilitation institutions operated on the edge of compliance, extracting excess profits through opaque fees, hidden charges, and aggressive collection practices. With the regulators' strong intervention and full-chain rectification, this grey path has been effectively closed. Regulations not only established clear boundaries for collection practices through guidelines implemented in 2025 and 2026, pushing the industry into an era of legal collection, but also guided the reduction of comprehensive financing costs, setting a clear 24% ceiling and gradually moving towards below 20%, while mandating full cost transparency and unified disclosure. Additionally, the National Financial Regulatory Administration directly summoned several leading loan facilitation platforms, addressing persistent issues such as misleading marketing, opaque fees, and违规 collection, forming a high-pressure rectification cycle. For listed loan facilitation companies, this presents a dual challenge to their profit models and valuation logic, but also a critical window to reshape their core value and construct a new industry narrative. Only by abandoning previous违规 models and adhering to compliance, strengthening technological risk control, and expanding into diversified service scenarios can they establish long-term competitiveness amid the industry reshuffle. As the domestic loan facilitation business enters a period of volume contraction, various platforms are actively seeking a second growth curve. Overseas expansion is a significant direction, but aside from FinVolution Group, other platforms have yet to report substantial results. By the end of 2025, FinVolution Group's international registered users reached 52.1 million, a 45.9% year-on-year increase, with cumulative borrowers at 11.7 million, up 67.1% year-on-year. Its full-year 2025 transaction volume was 14 billion yuan, growing 38.6% year-on-year; the fourth-quarter volume reached 4.1 billion yuan, accounting for 31.4% of total revenue, with growth accelerating to 41.4%, far exceeding its domestic business. Management has clearly stated the goal to increase the international business's revenue contribution to 50% by 2030. In overseas markets like Indonesia and the Philippines, FinVolution Group ranks among the top in the local tech platform segment, holding the third position in Indonesia and the first in the Philippines. The total loan scale in these two markets is approximately $370 million, with annual lending volume growing nearly 40% year-on-year. The company also plans a strategic entry into the Australian market to further broaden its overseas footprint. Information disclosure on overseas businesses by LexinFintech and Jiayin Group is limited, lacking absolute figures. While they report strong growth performance, its significance is questionable if starting from a very low base. LexinFintech stated it is deepening its presence in Mexico and Indonesia, with overseas customer acquisition costs decreasing 19% quarter-on-quarter. Jiayin Group disclosed that its Indonesian business scale grew about 187% year-on-year in 2025, with registered users increasing about 119% year-on-year; its Mexican business accelerated significantly in the fourth quarter, with full-year loan issuance volume up approximately 105% year-on-year. Following its presence in Hong Kong and Portugal, Weicai China formally entered the Indonesian market in 2025, acquiring an 85% stake in Indonesian lending company PT Doeku Peduli Indonesia. Qifu Technology initiated small-scale operations in the UK in 2025, beginning its exploration of developed markets, and announced in 2026 an acceleration of its overseas layout into Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. CEO Wu Haisheng stated the intention to leverage domestic AI credit experience to embrace globalization. Another growth logic is technological empowerment. Several platforms indicated that artificial intelligence is rapidly penetrating all aspects of loan facilitation, becoming a core engine for business upgrade. However, the traditional logic of technological empowerment (referral, facilitation) is becoming untenable. For example, LexinFintech's technology enablement service revenue plummeted 63% quarter-on-quarter in Q4, reflecting licensed financial institutions' gradual distancing from shallow cooperation models due to compliance and risk concerns. Qifu Technology's platform service net revenue also decreased significantly by 50%, yet revenue from new types of technical services (technical support, risk control systems, operational tools, data services, etc.) reached 360 million yuan, growing over 110% year-on-year, showing a bright spot. Qifu's FocusPro solution, oriented towards serving banks' independent risk control, helped partner banks achieve a 448% year-on-year increase in loan issuance volume in 2025, with the year-end balance reaching 11.8 billion yuan. Beyond overseas expansion and technology, Weicai China and Yiren Digital have also ventured into the cryptocurrency领域. Weicai China indirectly acquired a 15% stake in crypto exchange Thousand Whales Technology (BVI) in 2024 and invested HK$2.395 billion in 2025 to acquire a stake in EXIO Group, a licensed virtual asset trading platform in Hong Kong. These布局 are still in early stages, with no specific performance disclosed. As for Yiren Digital, the value of its cryptocurrency holdings was approximately 391 million yuan (about $55.95 million) as of the end of 2025. The company noted in several quarterly reports that its current profits and losses are highly correlated with cryptocurrency prices, with major adjustments stemming from price volatility in crypto assets.
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