The year 2025 marked a pivotal turning point for China's fintech industry, fundamentally reshaped by stringent regulations and technological advancements. With the formal implementation of the "Notice on Strengthening Commercial Banks' Internet-Assisted Lending Business Management and Enhancing Financial Service Quality" (hereafter referred to as the "New Lending Rules") on October 1, 2025, the longstanding era of extensive expansion came to an end. The industry has since entered a critical phase focused on compliance, quality, and profitability.

Six months into this regulatory overhaul, five U.S.-listed leading fintech companies—Qifu Technology, LexinFintech Holdings Ltd., FinVolution Group, X Financial, and Yiren Digital—have recently disclosed their full-year 2025 financial results. These reports reveal not only fluctuations in revenue and profits but also distinct survival strategies and breakthrough pathways adopted by each company amid industry-wide adjustments.

**Stable Foundation: Optimized Revenue Structure and Resilient Profits** Despite experiencing short-term challenges in the fourth quarter due to the New Lending Rules, the annual performance of these five fintech firms demonstrated robust fundamentals and strong cyclical resilience. Overall, total revenue continued to expand in 2025, with significant concentration among top players and varied growth drivers in profitability. Qifu Technology maintained its leading position with revenue of RMB 19.205 billion, followed by LexinFintech and FinVolution forming the RMB 10-billion revenue club, while X Financial and Yiren Digital constituted the second tier.

Specifically, Qifu Technology reported annual net revenue of RMB 19.205 billion, a year-on-year increase of 11.88%, securing the top industry rank. The company facilitated loan volume of RMB 327.069 billion, up 1.6% year-on-year, with a repeat borrowing rate of 93.3%, indicating high user loyalty and business resilience.

LexinFintech followed with full-year revenue of RMB 13.152 billion, though down 7.4% year-on-year, its net profit attributable to shareholders surged 52.4% to RMB 1.677 billion, highlighting strong profit resilience. This was largely driven by its integrated "consumption scenario + credit service" ecosystem, where non-credit businesses began contributing to profit stability.

As a representative of steady growth, FinVolution achieved revenue of RMB 13.57 billion, up 3.8% year-on-year, and net profit of RMB 2.55 billion, rising 6.6%, achieving dual growth in both metrics.

X Financial also demonstrated stable progress, with annual net revenue of RMB 7.6394 billion and net profit of RMB 1.4646 billion, maintaining sustainable profitability through a diversified growth model.

Yiren Digital reported annual revenue of RMB 5.719 billion, stabilizing its operations in a complex market environment. Although full-year net profit fluctuated due to prudent provisions set aside in the fourth quarter for compliance purposes, the company proactively tightened risk controls and adjusted its customer base, raising the repeat borrower ratio to 77%, reflecting deep cultivation of high-quality existing customers and operational resilience.

**Critical Test: Fourth Quarter 2025 as a Stress Test Under New Rules** The New Lending Rules undoubtedly represented the most impactful variable for the industry in 2025. Their effects were not evenly distributed throughout the year but concentrated in the fourth quarter, making it a key period to assess each company's regulatory adaptability. Amid requirements such as a cap on comprehensive financing costs at 24% and enhanced transparency, concerns arose that fintech earnings might plummet.

However, latest financial data indicate that while fourth-quarter performance was generally under pressure, this reflected proactive industry adjustments to optimize structure and eliminate inefficiencies, rather than passive disruption.

In response to macroeconomic uncertainties, these five fintech firms uniformly adopted prudent operational strategies. For instance, LexinFintech actively restructured its business, optimized risk strategies, and strictly controlled new asset quality in the fourth quarter to achieve scale stability and risk reduction. Although Yiren Digital's annual profit was significantly affected by fourth-quarter provisions, this resulted from its deliberate shift toward more cautious operations and higher risk thresholds, alongside elevating its repeat borrower ratio to 77%, indicating deepened focus on high-quality customers.

"Collective profit declines in the fourth quarter stemmed from one-time adjustments post-regulation and a fundamental industry restructuring. Short-term, this reflects phased responses to scale contraction, rate reductions, and increased provisions; long-term, interest rate caps, leverage constraints, and list-based management have fundamentally altered the old model reliant on high rates and leverage. The industry's growth logic has shifted toward sustainable paths balancing compliance, risk control, and cost-income alignment, a change that is permanent," said Wang Pengbo, chief analyst at Bocon Consulting.

Qifu Technology's Chief Risk Officer Zheng Yan acknowledged that asset risk levels rose in the fourth quarter due to external factors, but the company has tightened risk controls, with recently issued loans showing marginal improvement.

X Financial President Li Kan emphasized that the company strengthened its risk management system, optimized collection strategies, and dynamically adjusted fund allocation in 2025 to ensure balance sheet resilience. Facing market uncertainties, the firm will maintain a long-term focus on asset quality, prudent growth, and ample liquidity, underpinning medium-to-long-term development with compliance.

**Second Growth Curve: Overseas Operations Enter Harvest Phase** While domestic operations form the foundation, overseas markets emerged as the most prominent growth driver in these fintechs' 2025 reports, serving as a key hedge against domestic interest rate declines.

FinVolution's international business maintained strong momentum, with overseas revenue accounting for 31.4% of total revenue in the fourth quarter, a record high. Its user base in Indonesia and Philippines doubled to 5.9 million, and the company officially entered the Australian market, marking a key step into developed economies.

LexinFintech achieved significant results in Mexico and Indonesia, with expanded scale, improved profitability, and enhanced asset quality. Its overseas operations are transitioning from investment phase to contribution phase, becoming a new growth engine.

Yiren Digital actively explored overseas expansion through diversified asset allocation, gradually broadening its business scope to储备 new momentum for long-term development.

For these fintech companies, global expansion is no longer a narrative but a tangible second growth curve. FinVolution's overseas revenue exceeding 30% demonstrates the viability of fintech globalization, lifting industry growth ceilings. Companies with global vision and localized operational capabilities are seeing their valuation frameworks reconstructed.

**Technology Implementation: AI Models Transition from Demonstration to Value Creation** 2025 witnessed comprehensive deployment of AI large models in fintech, with investments translating into measurable cost savings and efficiency gains.

Qifu Technology's technology output business experienced explosive growth, with its FocusPro solution helping partner banks increase loan volume by approximately 448% year-on-year. Its AI approval system achieved over 90% accuracy in identifying substantive risks, proving technology's ability to generate business value.

LexinFintech embedded AI large models and agent technologies deeply into risk control, customer service, and operations. By integrating cognitive reasoning capabilities, risk control efficiency and accuracy significantly improved, enabling a shift from reactive responses to proactive predictions.

FinVolution increased R&D spending by 8% year-on-year, introducing AI agents into application processes in the fourth quarter to enhance user conversion rates through real-time guidance.

Yiren Digital continued advancing technology empowerment, using smart risk control and automated operations to improve service efficiency for existing customers and value extraction capabilities.

These financial metrics indicate technology's evolution from a customer acquisition tool to a risk control brake and operational shock absorber. Through scaled AI application, leading companies are building deeper moats reflected not only in efficiency but also in resilience against risk cycles.

**Valuation Gap: Potential Re-rating for U.S.-Listed Chinese Fintechs** Collectively, the 2025 reports of these five companies reveal profound qualitative changes in China's fintech industry.

Despite short-term volatility in the fourth quarter, the year's overarching theme remained high-quality growth. New regulations raised industry entry barriers, squeezing out smaller players unable to bear high compliance and capital costs, thereby accelerating resource concentration toward top compliant firms and intensifying the Matthew Effect.

For general investors, U.S.-listed Chinese fintech stocks currently trade at a valuation discount, with their underlying investment thesis shifting. They are no longer mere credit amplifiers pursuing high risks but have evolved into value stocks characterized by stable cash flows, high shareholder returns, and technology empowerment. Examples include LexinFintech's increased dividend payout ratio to 30% of net profit in second-half 2025, with annual dividends per share reaching $0.382, implying a dividend yield as high as 12%; and FinVolution's simultaneous share repurchases ($107 million) and dividend distributions, demonstrating management confidence.

In 2026, the elimination race for survival and quality growth continues, with victory hinging on balancing the "impossible trinity" of compliance, growth, and risk control. Companies that maintained底线, strengthened internal capabilities, and discovered new pathways in 2025 may experience dual recovery in valuations and performance—signifying not just numerical improvement but a broader revaluation and renewal of China's fintech sector.