El crecimiento de los productos de gestión patrimonial bancaria es fuerte, con una mayor diferenciación. La nueva emisión de productos con derechos de la Banca de Comunicaciones ha aumentado 3 veces.

21st Century Business Herald reporter Yu Jixin

As 2025 bank annual reports are disclosed in large numbers, each bank’s annual exam answers for their asset management businesses are also emerging accordingly.

21st Century Business Herald reporter Jixin Yu combed through and found that, in terms of wealth management business, over the past year the bank wealth management scale has shown a striking “two extremes—ice and fire—” trend. On one hand, the wealth management business scales of multiple banks represented by Huaxia Bank achieved high growth, with year-on-year growth as high as 45.82%, leading the market; on the other hand, the wealth management scales of also multiple institutions saw year-on-year declines.

In terms of total scale, China Merchants Bank ranked first in the industry with wealth management scale of more than 2.6 trillion yuan, and the lineup of banks with wealth management scale at the trillion-yuan level has expanded to 13. Notably, in the latest strategic statements made by banks regarding their asset management businesses, equity-linked products and multi-strategy deployments have become a “hot topic” mentioned multiple times.

Regarding the wealth management business. A senior researcher and investment professional from a wealth-management subsidiary of a city commercial bank told this reporter that the main drivers for the widespread growth in 2025 bank wealth management business scale are that the reduction in deposit interest rates has pushed “deposit relocation,” and residents’ funds have continued flowing into the wealth management product market. At the same time, after regulators banned “ranking/charts” style promotion, institutions that do not rely on such marketing methods actually received relatively favorable conditions, and “off-platform distribution channels are further opened” has also brought inflows of funds to some institutions.

A senior practitioner from a wealth-management subsidiary in Shanghai told the reporter that, considering regulators’ requirements to reduce unlicensed wealth management, the overall true growth momentum of the wealth management business is actually stronger than what the financial report data may show. As for differences in performance among different institutions, he believes that in an overall favorable industry backdrop, some institutions failing to achieve growth often stem from their specific reasons—for example, a strategy adjustment by the parent bank for its wealth management business may lead to a passive contraction in scale.

Asset management sector sees broad growth

21st Century Business Herald reporter, based on a review of the 2025 financial reports that had been disclosed as of the time of publication, found that bank wealth management businesses overall show a pattern of most seeing growth and a few seeing contraction, with the scale of leading institutions continuing to expand, while some mid-sized and small banks face transformation challenges due to scale reduction pressures.

In terms of the scale of the bank’s overall wealth management business, as of end-2025, China Merchants Bank maintained the No. 1 position in the market with a wealth management scale of 26k yuan, becoming the first bank whose wealth management business surpassed the 2.6 trillion-yuan threshold. Last year, the wealth management scales of banks such as Industrial Bank, CITIC, Agricultural Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, Everbright, Bank of Communications, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Minsheng, and Postal Savings Bank of China were also kept at the trillion-yuan level. Together with CMB, they formed a stable group of 13 leading institutions.

In terms of growth rates in scale, market differentiation is even more pronounced.

Among them, Huaxia Bank’s wealth management scale rose sharply from 8,332.93 billion yuan at end-2024 to 26k yuan at end-2025, successfully stepping onto a new 1.2 trillion-yuan plateau. The year-on-year growth rate was as high as 45.82%, with the growth rate far ahead of others. The growth rates of Minsheng Bank, China Post Savings Bank, and Zhejiang Commercial Bank were also strong, reaching 29.80%, 28.81%, and 26.20% respectively, all above 25%. In addition, Everbright Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, and Huishang Bank also achieved year-on-year high growth above 10%.

By contrast, the wealth management scale of some banks saw year-on-year contraction. Further observation shows that whether a wealth management subsidiary is established is one of the key factors affecting changes in scale. Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank’s decline in this business reached 12.26%, with its scale falling from 1,783.96 billion yuan at end-2024 to 1,565.24 billion yuan in 2025; in the same period, Zhongyuan Bank fell 9.80% and Tianjin Bank fell 4.03%. Industry insiders believe that in the future, resources in bank wealth management business will further concentrate on leading banks and licensed wealth management subsidiaries, while mid-sized and small banks will need to find a new balance between “downsizing” and “transformation.”

The asset management capabilities of bank groups are not only reflected in wealth management business. Their subsidiaries such as funds, trust companies, and insurance asset management also represent important dimensions of their comprehensive asset management capability. Based on annual report disclosures, they generally achieved growth.

Under China Merchants Bank, the combined total scale of asset management businesses of CMB Wealth Management, China Merchants Fund, China Merchants Sinon Trust, and CMB International is 4.71 trillion yuan, up 5.13% from the end of the previous year. Of these, the balance of wealth management products of CMB Wealth Management is 2.64 trillion yuan, up 6.88% from the end of the previous year; China Merchants Fund’s asset management business scale is 1.59 trillion yuan, up 1.27% from the end of the previous year; China Merchants Sinon Trust’s asset management business scale is 12k yuan, up 4.17% from the end of the previous year; and CMB International’s asset management business scale is 178.4B yuan, up 26.02% from the end of the previous year.

Among the companies under Industrial Bank, the growth rates of wealth management, fund, and trust subsidiaries are faster. Specifically, Industrial Bank Trust’s asset management scale is 156.52B yuan, up significantly by 110.29% from the end of the previous year; Industrial Bank Fund’s asset management scale is 47.1k yuan, up 25.30% from the end of the previous year.

Equity-linked products are a key focus for deployment

The growth in 2025 bank wealth management scale is not only attributable to deposit relocation and channel expansion, but also to the relatively favorable market environment during the year—especially the rebound in equity markets—which added fuel for wealth management products to improve returns and attract capital. Many banks in their annual reports clearly stated that developing equity-linked products (products whose investment portfolios include equity-type assets) and multi-strategy products are important strategic directions.

Bank of Communications stated that last year it continuously enriched product and service supply. The number of newly issued proactive equity-linked products throughout the year doubled, and the increase in the scale of new issuance exceeded 300%. CITIC Bank’s Xin Yin Wealth Management also clearly laid out in its annual report its strategy of “striving to be an important supplier of equity-linked products.” By end-2025, the outstanding scale of Xin Yin Wealth Management’s equity-linked products reached 26.4k yuan, increasing substantially by 15.9k yuan from the end of the previous year. The proportion of new products rose markedly from 9.68% to 14.70%.

China Merchants Bank pointed out that with the equity market rebounding in 2025, clients’ risk preferences showed marginal improvement, and the willingness to allocate to equity-linked wealth management products increased. CMB Wealth Management actively promoted a multi-pronged equity-linked strategy layout, strengthening the deployment of medium-to-long term and multi-asset, multi-strategy products.

Huaxia Bank mentioned that Huaxia Wealth Management has continued to increase the intensity of centralized investments in equities. It has already formed a precise layout in four directions: broad-market enhancement, dividends, technology, and Hong Kong stocks.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China also stated that ICBC Wealth Management adheres to a multi-market, multi-asset, and multi-strategy layout, and strengthens innovation in equity-linked and medium-to-long term duration products. From the perspective of ICBC Wealth Management’s investment portfolio: the amount and proportion of highly liquid assets such as cash, deposits, and bought-for-repurchase categories have both increased significantly. At the same time, the amount of “other assets” including equity-type assets and financial derivatives has grown substantially. Within fixed-income-type assets, however, the allocation proportion of standard bonds has declined. That is, while ensuring liquidity and safety, it appropriately reduces reliance on traditional bonds and actively “seeks returns” from diverse assets such as equities.

In addition to diversified allocation, there are different views in the industry about performance growth. The aforementioned senior wealth management practitioner in Shanghai told the reporter that last year the overall growth in the wealth management market scale was about 11%. The deeper underlying reason is that “wealth management products can, through strategy arrangements, delay the realization of capital gains brought by the downward trend in interest rates,” thereby achieving more competitive return performance than deposits. However, this operation is questionable from a compliance standpoint—“and this is closely related to regulators’ push to reduce closing price/valuation methods such as those for estimating prices.”

He believes that the growth in scale in 2025 has “little relation” to the development of equity-linked products. Instead, the future development thinking for wealth management business must, in a low interest rate environment, move toward advancing the coordinated development of multi-assets and multi-strategies. In actual operations, companies will still continue to work hard on controlling product volatility and pursuing steady returns, and actively look for new assets or investment tools that can meet the steady needs of wealth management clients.

In the long run, bank wealth management must still hold onto its own positioning in order to stabilize its performance fundamentals—that is, the industry’s widely shared consensus that it should seek sustainable balance between pursuing returns and managing risks, and between innovation exploration and customer experience. Equity-linked products are an important tool to enhance banks’ wealth management and asset management capabilities and to increase and thicken returns, but they are by no means a “miracle medicine” that can ignore risks or expand blindly. Steady development will remain the main tone of industry development.

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