Pearl Bank Uganda receives the Gold Award for Integrated Report of the Year at the 2026 Financial Reporting (FiRe) Awards.
By Joseph Kiggundu
KAMPALA.Pearl Bank Uganda has won the Gold Award for Integrated Report of the Year at the 2026 Financial Reporting (FiRe) Awards.
The accolade recognizes the bank’s 2025 annual report, which brings together the bank’s financial performance, strategy, governance and sustainability disclosures.
The award comes as the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Uganda (ICPAU) pushes organisations to move beyond basic financial statements and provide stakeholders with a more complete account of their operations, performance and long-term value creation.
The award
ICPAU President CPA David Timothy Ediomu said the FiRe Awards, introduced in 2011, have reached nearly 1,000 organisations through guidance on applying international financial reporting standards and feedback intended to improve the quality of annual reports.
The awards assess organisations on financial reporting, corporate governance disclosure, sustainability reporting, and presentation and communication. The evaluation also considers management commentary, risk management and how effectively reports explain an organisation’s performance to stakeholders.
Pearl Bank’s 2025 report provides an account of the bank’s financial position alongside its business operations and governance structures.
The bank reported profit after tax of UGX47.3 billion, an increase of 33.6% from the previous year, while revenue rose 20.1% to UGX298 billion. Customer deposits increased to UGX1.417 trillion from UGX990 billion, while loans and advances stood at UGX749 billion.
The report also details the performance of Wendi, the bank’s digital financial services platform, which recorded 2.4 million unique users and processed 22.3 million transactions valued at UGX5.1 trillion during 2025.
Wendi’s network had grown to 9,619 agents operating across 5,030 parishes and 1,791 sub-counties, according to the report.
Under the Parish Development Model, the platform facilitated UGX1.2 trillion in disbursements to more than 1.19 million beneficiaries. Women accounted for 656,072 of those beneficiaries, while 483,828 were young people.
On governance and risk management, Pearl Bank said it had incorporated environmental, social and governance considerations into its risk framework, including screening lending activities for sustainability risks and maintaining a sustainability risk register.
The report also outlines the bank’s sustainability oversight arrangements and its alignment with the IFRS S1 and S2 sustainability disclosure standards.
Pearl Bank said it was the first commercial bank in Uganda to receive Sustainability Certification from the European Organisation for Sustainable Development.
The FiRe Awards were established by ICPAU to improve the quality of financial and business reporting in Uganda by encouraging compliance with reporting standards and stronger corporate disclosures. More than 1,000 organisations have participated since the initiative began, with entrants receiving feedback to help improve their annual reports.