Two ways to win at $50 billion, and neither label explains the margins

Rank one and rank two divide the cohort by operating model, then invert it on the very metric the models are meant to explain. Raymond James, classed on the fee-based side, reported a net interest margin of 3.39% ^[8]. First Citizens, the traditional lender at the top of the table, reported 3.25% [c5b]. The wealth firm beat the lender on spread by 14 basis points ^[3], and both cleared the top-ten average of 2.89% [c2a], by 50 and 36 basis points respectively ^[2][1]. What Capital Performance Group's Ally Akins describes as two recipes is a difference in fee income as a share of assets ^[3], not a difference in who earns the wider margin.

The cohort number that drew less attention is cost. Noninterest expense growth averaged 7.50% across the top ten, running 1.08 points ahead of core deposit growth at 6.42% ^[4] and 0.32 points ahead of net loan growth at 7.18% ^[5][c2b]. Matthew Prince of the same firm called 2025 a really good year for banks on spread, with short-term rates lower and long-term rates higher ^[6]. It was also a year in which the best-performing large banks added expense faster than they added either loans or the deposits funding them.

The two leaders paid for growth differently. Raymond James grew net loans 13.31% against core deposit growth of 8.75% ^[8], about 1.52 times, a gap of 4.56 points ^[6]. First Citizens' gap was 0.26 points, 6.16% loans against 5.90% deposits [c5b]^[8]. Asset growth financed from something other than core deposits reprices faster when the curve moves, and here it is the fee-based firm, not the lender, carrying that mismatch.

The averaging window matters too. First Citizens' standing rests partly on acquisitions rather than on one year of rates: the bank says its Silicon Valley Bank integration is substantially complete and that it bought 138 branches from BMO Bank ^[9]. CEO Frank Holding's shareholder letter points 2026 at growing deposits and optimizing capital through share repurchases ^[10], which is a return story rather than an expansion one. Meanwhile its wealth arm grew assets under management at a double-digit rate to $61 billion ^[11], a book equal in size to roughly 27% of its $229.7 billion balance sheet ^[7]. Akins notes that JPMorgan runs both models at once ^[3]. At the top of this table the two camps are already leaking into each other: a lender compounding fee income, and a fee house growing loans faster than its deposits.