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Cailianshe News, August 13 (Reporter Guo Zishuo)Since the new round of deposit rate cuts started on July 25, the deposit interest rates of various banks have attracted much attention. As the leaders of commercial banks, several state-owned banks took the lead in lowering their deposit interest rates, driving the deposit interest rates of various maturities into the "1" era.

However, a reporter from Cailianshe noticed that this round of deposit rate cuts has been going on for less than three weeks, and some large state-owned banks have recently raised their execution rates against the trend. For customers in specific regions, the execution rate of three-year time deposit products is 65 basis points higher than the listing rate.

After further investigation, the reporter found that it is not uncommon for state-owned banks and joint-stock banks to set preferential deposit interest rates for specific groups of people or specific deposit methods. State-owned banks still have three-year time deposit products with an annual interest rate exceeding 2%. What do you think of this "awkward" behavior of commercial banks, which lowered the listed interest rate and then added it back to the execution rate?

Industry insiders believe that the phenomenon of deposit "moving" is quite common due to the price comparison effect between wealth management and deposit interest rates. Large state-owned banks can increase their deposit-attracting competitiveness by increasing their interest rates by a certain basis point based on the market environment, which is actually a manifestation of the marketization of deposit interest rates.

It is common for the execution interest rate to rise, and major banks have no shortage of time deposit products with an interest rate of more than 2%.

At present, the listed interest rates for 1-year, 2-year and 3-year fixed deposits of many large state-owned banks have dropped to 1.35%, 1.45% and 1.75% respectively, but the large state-owned banks do not lack deposit products with an annual interest rate of 2% (or above).

Some investorsBank of CommunicationsThe app shows that "Shenzhen customers enjoy a floating interest rate for fixed deposits". After the floating, the highest annual interest rate for three-year fixed deposits is 2.4%, which is 65 basis points higher than the listed interest rate of 1.75%. Even for 1-year and 2-year fixed deposit products, the annual interest rates are 1.85% and 1.95% respectively. In addition, Shenzhen Construction Bank depositors reported that as long as the minimum deposit amount reaches 30,000 yuan, the deposit interest rate for three-year fixed deposit products can reach 2.1%.

Agricultural Bank of ChinaSimilar special deposit products are set up according to different regions or themes. For example, the 2024 "Jinsui Yinliduo Time Deposit" No. 043 five-year deposit product has an interest rate of 2.20% and a minimum deposit threshold of 50,000 yuan; the 2024 "Jinsui Yinliduo Time Deposit" Guangdong No. 0050 three-year product has an annual interest rate of 2.15% and a minimum deposit threshold of 1,000 yuan.

ICBC's fixed-term deposit product, Monthly Deposit, also has a large interest rate discount. The annual interest rates for 1-year and 2-year deposits are 1.6% and 1.7% respectively, and the 3-year deposit is 2.15%. The minimum deposit is 1,000 yuan. In addition to large state-owned banks, joint-stock banks also have similar situations. The "CMB Featured" deposit product Monthly Deposit shows that the annual interest rates for 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year deposits are 1.85%, 1.95%, and 2% respectively. In comparison, the listed interest rates for the above three term fixed deposits are 1.35%, 1.45%, and 1.75% respectively, which are 50 basis points, 50 basis points, and 25 basis points lower than the featured deposit interest rates.

Against the backdrop of deposit interest rate cuts, why are there still many fixed deposit products with interest rates of more than 2% in the market?

"The two are not contradictory. Since the establishment of the self-regulatory mechanism for deposit interest rate pricing, banks have appropriately floated the actual interest rate for deposits within the upper limit of the self-regulatory mechanism based on the listed interest rate. This is a market behavior choice." Lou Feipeng, a researcher at the Postal Savings Bank of China, told Cailianshe reporters that banks previously lowered the listed deposit interest rate mainly to reduce liability costs and stabilize the bank's net interest margin to improve the sustainability of supporting the real economy. At present, banks are floating deposit interest rates in the face of actual market conditions in order to improve their competitiveness in attracting deposits in the regional market, which is also a market-oriented choice.

The price comparison effect forces price increases, and deposit migration may be difficult to reverse

After the interest rate cuts, banks’ deposit-raising efforts have also faced strong competition, namely bank wealth management.

As the average yield is higher than the deposit rate, bank wealth management has become an alternative option for some depositors to take over part of the deposit funds. The People's Bank of China's Monetary Policy Implementation Report for the Second Quarter of 2024 pointed out that at the end of July, the average annualized yield of bank wealth management exceeded 3%, while the current bank's 3-year fixed deposit rate was less than 2%, attracting some investors to "move" their deposits to such products.

"The trend of deposit 'disintermediation' is difficult to reverse, and financial management has become more resilient to interest rate fluctuations."Everbright SecuritiesAnalyst Wang Yifeng also pointed out that in the past period of time, the price comparison effect of wealth management products was prominent compared with deposits, and the "disintermediation" of general deposits continued to increase, even forming a positive cycle of "deposit disintermediation-wealth management yield rate" going down. Especially since the second quarter, the "disintermediation" of resident deposits and the rectification of "manual interest supplement" of corporate deposits have strengthened the flow of corporate deposits to wealth management and other asset management products. The resonance of these two factors has promoted the rapid expansion of the scale of asset management products represented by wealth management, and the scale of wealth management has once again reached 30 trillion yuan.

From the perspective of market observation, under the guidance of deposit interest rates, the phenomenon of deposit "special forces" rushing to deposit in other places is becoming more and more common, and some depositors are squatting to buy large-denomination certificates of deposit from small and medium-sized banks with relatively high interest rates. The pursuit of "high interest rates" by depositors has made the war of attracting deposits among commercial banks still "white-hot".