news

in the first half of 2024, the profitability pressure of the banking industry has become more prominent, and the balance sheet has also undergone relatively obvious changes. as the "vanguard" and "main force" serving the real economy, the five state-owned banks have rarely seen a decline in both revenue and net profit. their balance sheets reveal multiple signals, including a slowdown in the expansion of credit scale, a rare overall decline in corporate demand deposits, and a rise in the non-performing rate of personal loans.

based on industry opinions, the above phenomenon is mainly due to the de-watering of the financial sector, the suspension of manual interest payments, and changes in residents' income and expectations.

in the first half of this year, among the six major state-owned banks, five banks, including icbc, boc, ccb, boc and postal savings bank of china, saw a decline in both revenue and net profit attributable to their parent companies. among them, three had a decline in net interest income. abc was the only state-owned bank whose revenue and net profit increased year-on-year.

in fact, as the net interest margin continues to narrow, the commercial banks' net interest income has been "making up for price with volume" for a long time. in the first half of this year, the slowdown in the growth of interest-bearing assets has further exposed the pressure on net interest income.

ciccbanking analyst lin yingqi said that in the first half of the year, the simulated net interest margin of the banking industry was flat compared with the end of the first quarter, and the downward trend has shown signs of easing, but the decline in net interest income widened to -3.8% due to the drag of asset growth.

the drag of the slowdown in asset growth is more obvious among large state-owned banks.zhongtai securitiesdata shows that in the first half of the year, the year-on-year growth rates of net interest of state-owned banks, joint-stock banks, city commercial banks and rural commercial banks changed by -1.1, 1.1, 0.7 and 0.2 percentage points respectively compared with the year-on-year growth rates in the first quarter. the widening decline in state-owned banks was mainly due to the significant slowdown in the pace of scale expansion. the growth rate of interest-earning assets of state-owned banks in the first half of the year was 7.9%, a marginal decrease of 3.1 percentage points from the first quarter.

looking specifically at loan business, in the first half of this year, the total amount of loans of the six major banks increased by about 7.1 trillion yuan. in terms of growth rate, the six major banks maintained a loan growth rate of more than 10% throughout last year, and the loan balance growth rate in the first half of this year generally returned to single digits compared with the beginning of the year.

in terms of the loan balance structure of major banks, corporate loans are still an important support, while housing loans, the main component of personal loans, continue to decline. the proportion of corporate and personal loans in the loans of major banks generally shows an up and down trend.

wind data shows that in the first half of this year, the total balance of personal housing loans of 42 listed banks decreased by nearly 320 billion yuan compared with the beginning of the year. among them, the six major state-owned banks decreased by a total of 311.9 billion yuan, accounting for half of the total.

in the first half of the year, the expansion of bank assets slowed down, which was also related to the decline in deposit growth. according to statistics from cicc, in the first half of the year, the deposit growth rate of listed banks was 4.4% year-on-year, down 3.3 percentage points from the first quarter. state-owned banks and joint-stock banks were more affected by manual interest payment and liquidation, and their deposit growth rate declined more. the deposit growth rate of regional banks rebounded slightly from the first quarter.

specifically, the deposit scale of the six major banks in the first half of the year increased by about 3.97 trillion yuan compared with the beginning of the year, but onlypostal savings bankthe deposit scale increased by more than 5% compared with the beginning of the year.icbc、china construction bank、bank of communicationsthe growth rate of deposit balances has dropped below 2%.

in comparison, in 2023, the deposit scale of the six major banks increased by about 14.34 trillion yuan throughout the year, among which the total deposit growth rate of four banks was above 10%.

from a structural perspective, in the first half of this year, the growth rate of corporate deposits of major banks showed a significant decline. among them, the scale of corporate deposits of icbc, abc and bank of communications showed a rare decline, decreasing by about 330.4 billion yuan, 148.7 billion yuan and 134.4 billion yuan respectively.bank of china, postal savings bank of china’s corporate deposits increased by 321.7 billion yuan, 33.2 billion yuan, and 188.2 billion yuan.

focusing on the decline in corporate deposits of large banks, the decline in demand deposits was even more prominent. the overall corporate demand deposits of the six major banks decreased by a rare 715.7 billion yuan compared with the beginning of the year. except for postal savings bank of china, the other five major banks all experienced declines to varying degrees, among which bank of china decreased by about 387 billion yuan, the largest among the large banks.

in 2023, the corporate demand deposits of icbc, ccb and psbc have shown a downward trend, but the six major banks as a whole still barely maintain positive growth. among them, icbc's corporate demand deposits shrank by more than 700 billion yuan last year, while the corporate demand deposits of ccb and psbc shrank by about 170.5 billion yuan and 42.9 billion yuan respectively.

in the first half of this year, some large banks also began to reduce corporate time deposits. wind data showed that in the first half of the year, icbc's corporate demand deposits decreased by about 43.7 billion yuan, a narrower decline than last year, but the bank was the only large bank in the first half of the year whose corporate time deposits declined, with a scale of about 286.7 billion yuan less.

in terms of asset quality, the overall non-performing loan ratios of major banks improved in the first half of the year, with corporate loans improving significantly and personal loan non-performing loan ratios showing a general upward trend.

in the first half of this year, icbc,agricultural bank of chinathe non-performing loan ratios of china construction bank, bank of china and bank of communications have all declined to varying degrees compared with the beginning of the year. the non-performing loan ratio of postal savings bank of china has slightly increased from 0.83% to 0.84%, but is still the lowest among the major banks overall.

among them, the non-performing loan ratio of corporate loans has declined across the board. in the highly-watched real estate loan sector, the non-performing loan ratios of all banks have further improved. among them, the non-performing loan ratios of real estate loans of bank of china and china construction bank have dropped by 0.57 and 0.44 percentage points respectively compared with the end of last year.

in contrast, the non-performing loan ratio of personal loans has an overall upward trend. as of the end of june, the non-performing loan ratios of the five major banks with comparable data have all climbed to varying degrees compared with the end of last year. among them, the non-performing loan ratios of personal housing, consumer loans, operating loans and credit card businesses of icbc, ccb, abc and bank of communications have all risen, while the non-performing loan ratios of personal housing and other consumer loans of postal savings bank of china have improved to varying degrees.

many institutions have pointed out that the bad risks of retail business deserve attention in the future.gf securitiesthe research report analyzed that as forward-looking asset quality indicators began to fluctuate and retail loan asset quality risks were exposed, the relative advantages of the banking sector's performance may converge.

editor on duty: qisan