The Big Numbers Race: The Struggle Between «Al Rajhi» and «Kuwait Finance House» for the Title of «World’s Largest Islamic Bank»

The global Islamic banking market is witnessing accelerated growth and continuous evolution in the financial structure of banks, with heightened focus on asset expansion, deposit base development, and improving the efficiency of financing activities.

In this context, a new episode of the «Big Numbers Race» sheds light on the intense competition between Al Rajhi Bank, which tops the global Islamic banking sector in asset size, and Kuwait Finance House, which ranks second.

According to 2025 data, Al Rajhi Bank’s total assets reached 278.15 bn USD at end-2025, compared to 138.88 bn USD for Kuwait Finance House at the end of the same year, reflecting a clear structural superiority in balance sheet size for the Saudi bank.

This superiority extends to the deposit base, where Al Rajhi Bank has built one of the largest savings bases worldwide within the Islamic sector, recording 177.91 bn USD at end-2025, versus 68.30 bn USD for Kuwait Finance House at the same period. This reflects the strength of the brand and the breadth of its customer base for the Saudi bank.

On the financing activity level, Al Rajhi Bank continues to consolidate its dominance, with its net financing portfolio reaching 200.69 bn USD at end-2025, compared to 70.86 bn USD for Kuwait Finance House at year-end, reflecting the former’s broader lending base and high efficiency in deploying liquidity into yield-generating financing assets.

The gap between the two banks widens even further when analyzing growth dynamics over the last three years (from end-2022 to end-2025), where Al Rajhi Bank achieved strong asset growth of 37.1%, compared to only 14.9% for its Kuwaiti rival. This led to the difference jumping from 82.06 bn USD to 139.27 bn USD at end-2025.

Al Rajhi Bank also strengthened its superiority in deposits, recording cumulative growth of 18.3% over the three years, while Kuwait Finance House posted a decline of about 7.1% during the same period. This widened the gap to 109.61 bn USD at end-2025, compared to about 76.87 bn USD at end-2022.

In financing, Al Rajhi Bank maintained a faster expansion pace, achieving growth of 32.7% over the last three years, versus 15.1% for Kuwait Finance House in the same period. The financing gap thus reached 129.84 bn USD at end-2025, compared to about 89.69 bn USD at end-2022.

On profitability, the strength of Al Rajhi Bank’s business model appears even more clearly, recording net profits of 6.62 bn USD in 2025, with return on assets at 2.47% and return on equity at 18.68% — levels that reflect high operational efficiency and strong return-generation capacity.

In contrast, Kuwait Finance House recorded net profits of 2.34 bn USD, with return on assets at 1.81% and return on equity at 10.86%, indicating a clear gap in efficiency and profitability indicators.

On the capital base front, Al Rajhi Bank enjoys an additional advantage that enhances its future expansion capacity, with capital reaching 10.66 bn USD at end-2025, compared to about 6 bn USD for Kuwait Finance House at the same period, providing it with greater room to finance growth, absorb shocks, and strengthen financial resilience.

The financial indicators of both banks confirm that the competition between «Al Rajhi» and «Kuwait Finance House» is no longer merely a race for size leadership, but has turned into a widening competitive gap clearly in favor of Al Rajhi Bank, which imposes clear superiority across all key performance metrics — whether in asset size, deposit base expansion, financing growth acceleration, profitability, or operational efficiency.

In contrast, Kuwait Finance House remains a major player and the world’s second-largest Islamic bank, yet it faces an increasing challenge in narrowing the gap with the leader, amid a relative slowdown in growth rates and decline in some indicators compared to its Saudi rival.

With these trends continuing, the leadership map in global Islamic banking appears set for further consolidation of Al Rajhi Bank’s dominance in the medium term, unless Kuwait Finance House succeeds in accelerating its expansion pace and enhancing operational efficiency in a way that allows it to rebalance the competition equation and regain momentum to close in on the leader.