Over 5% in technology investment! China Everbright Bank accelerates retail and technology dual-driven development

Produced by|China Visit Network

Reviewed by|Li Xiaoyan

On March 31, Everbright Bank held a 2025 annual performance briefing session, conveying a clear strategic direction: using retail business—“to make it solid and to make it excellent”—as the core focus, supported by a technology investment of more than 5% of total revenue; during the industry’s transformational, toughened-offensive period, it anchored its goal of high-quality development, building momentum for its plans for 2026 and the long-term future. In an external environment marked by a narrowing net interest margin and intensifying market competition, Everbright Bank adopted a mindset of “stability first and prioritizing quality and efficiency.” From wealth management and risk control to service upgrades, as well as computing power and algorithms, data governance, and system reengineering, it sketched a full-scope growth blueprint driven by two wheels: “wealth management + financial technology.”

As a key stronghold in the transition of joint-stock banks, Everbright Bank places its retail business at the center of its strategy. In 2026, it will clearly set “customer-centricity” as the main line, focusing on three key dimensions: wealth management, asset quality, and the service system. It will drive retail from scale expansion to a leap in both quality and efficiency, laying a solid foundation for building “a first-class wealth management bank.”

With deep cultivation of its wealth management core business, it builds an end-to-end portfolio of products and service matrices. The bank continues to strengthen the “Sunshine Wealth” brand, forming a dual-engine drive of “proprietary products + curated selections from the broader market.” On one hand, it optimizes the “Sunshine Wealth Management” product system, balancing stability and yield, strengthening the competitiveness of core products, and meeting residents’ needs for value-added protection against risks. On the other hand, it introduces high-quality asset management products through “Sunshine Gold Selection,” covering all customer segments from universal finance and mass customers to high-net-worth clients and private banking, precisely matching diverse asset allocation needs. Meanwhile, it returns to deposits as the foundation, focusing deposits as a key base customer asset. It strengthens the rollover and settlement of existing deposits due to mature, and, through scenario expansion and business integration, promotes coordinated efforts in the “volume-yield effectiveness” of retail deposits—building a stable “ballast” for business development. In 2025, retail AUM of the bank grew steadily; the wealth management balance surpassed 1.9 trillion yuan. Wealth management has become a core engine driving growth in fee and commission income.

Coordinate development and security, and ensure solid bottom lines for steady retail asset operations. Adhere to the principles of “prudent and compliant operations,” optimize the retail credit structure, and actively open up new scenarios and new tracks for inclusive business loans and consumer loans, driving credit deployment to better align with the real economy and residents’ consumption needs. Deepen the localized transformation of credit cards, segment and refine customer-tier operations to stabilize the basic盤 of earning assets; at the same time, improve an end-to-end risk control system, focusing on credit card risk governance, strictly contain new non-performing loans, orderly resolve existing risk, and achieve a dynamic balance between business expansion and risk control. This both ensures reasonable growth in the scale of retail assets and continuously optimizes asset quality, laying a secure safety boundary for long-term development.

Build a “123” service system to enhance the customer experience in all directions. Following digitalization and tiered service trends, Everbright Bank has built an integrated, intelligent, and professional service new model: “1” integrates three major channels—branch outlets, remote banking, and mobile banking—achieving seamless connection between online and offline operations, with service quality and effectiveness at the same level; “2” relies on the “Jinzhiliao” online interactive community and the 1-to-1 enterprise WeChat platform to build an efficient customer communication bridge; and “3” forms three teams—wealth management managers, professional advisors, and intelligent assistants—providing targeted, personalized financial services for different customer groups through deep integration of “human professionalism + intelligent technology.” From channel integration to scenario building, and from team empowerment, the service system upgrade targets the core goal of “improving customer stickiness and enhancing market competitiveness.”

At the performance briefing, Everbright Bank’s deputy president Yang Bingbing clearly released major signals: in 2025, technology investment would account for more than 5% of operating revenue, and resources would not be spread blindly; instead, it would precisely focus on four major directions: computing power, algorithms, data, and functions. Through “precise investment and efficient empowerment,” it would push technology’s transformation from support and保障 to core productive forces, injecting strong digital momentum into the bank’s overall transition.

Computing power development is accelerating, with intelligent computing power becoming the growth mainstay. Following the principle of “phased implementation and prioritizing what is urgently needed,” it advances both general-purpose computing power and intelligent computing power development in parallel. The former meets baseline business needs across the industry, while the latter focuses on core AI scenarios. In 2025, computing power development became a “watershed,” with growth in intelligent computing power far exceeding that of general-purpose computing power; the year-over-year increase was close to 150%. This lays a solid underlying foundation for deep AI applications. Optimizing the computing power structure marks that Everbright Bank’s digitization has moved from “basic information digitalization” to a new stage of “intelligent digitalization.” Transaction response speed and concurrency processing capability have been greatly improved, providing stable and efficient support for high-frequency businesses such as mobile banking and online credit operations.

Algorithm matrix deployment enables dual efficiency gains for employees and business. It focuses on building a “9×10” intelligent assistant matrix, covering 9 types of job roles and equipped with 10 general capabilities, fully empowering employees to reduce workload and improve efficiency. To date, the matrix has covered more than 15,000 employees, accounting for nearly 35%. For corporate account managers, assistants have cumulatively generated 37,000 intelligent reports, spanning the entire workflow from credit granting marketing, pre-loan investigations, and post-loan management, significantly shortening task cycles. At the same time, it advances the large-scale application of “AI + RPA.” Throughout the year, it added 610 intelligent automation scenarios, saving more than the equivalent of 1,100 person-years of work time. Nearly a hundred employees obtained modeler qualification, strengthening capabilities in homegrown algorithm development. Measured by Token consumption growth to gauge the depth of AI applications, it drives intelligent tools from “usable” to “better and more regularly used,” achieving a qualitative leap in operational efficiency and service response speed.

Deepen data governance to activate “digital assets” for high-quality development. In the AI era, data is the core productive factor. Everbright Bank’s systems promote the construction of high-quality data sets, integrating internal and external structured and unstructured data, driving the evolution of data from “accurate and usable” toward “understandable, inferable, and executable.” Facing frontline self-developed “ask-data” intelligent Q&A tools covering 6,000+ indicators, active users are nearly 5,000, substantially reducing branch-level barriers to using data for decision-making. It provides data support for operations decisions, customer due diligence, and targeted marketing. Upgraded data capabilities enable the bank to understand customers and markets better, providing precise “digital navigation” for product innovation, risk control optimization, and service upgrades.

Function upgrades empower, with the dual-wheel drive of core systems and key businesses. On one hand, it comprehensively promotes upgrades to the next-generation core business system and the integrated teller system, consolidating competitiveness in key areas. On the other hand, it fully supports key businesses such as inclusive finance, supply chain, and retail credit, strengthening end-to-end quality and efficiency on the online front. Notable outcomes include: reengineering the corporate inclusive finance online workflow, improving approval timeliness by more than 80%; delivering more than 30 benchmark supply-chain projects; and realizing the full online transformation of end-to-end post-loan collection for retail credit. By deeply integrating technology with business, it not only addresses pain points in traditional processes but also creates differentiated competitive advantages, bringing customers a “faster, simpler, better” service experience.

In 2025, Everbright Bank maintained steady operations amid industry pressure. Total assets exceeded 7.16 trillion yuan, up 3% year over year; operating revenue was 126.311 billion yuan, with fee and commission income up 6.2% year over year, reversing the recent downward trend; the cost-to-income ratio was optimized to 29.13%, with notable effectiveness in expense control. Behind this performance is the result of synchronized resonance and coordinated efforts between retail transformation and technology empowerment—wealth management driving growth in fee and commission income, technology investment enabling cost reduction and efficiency gains, risk control solidly upholding the bottom line, and service upgrades consolidating customer confidence.

Looking ahead to 2026, Everbright Bank’s strategic path is becoming even clearer: with “making retail solid and excellent” as the core, it will deepen wealth management as the main lane and strengthen asset quality and service capabilities; with “deep technology empowerment” as the engine, it will continuously strengthen computing power, algorithms, data, and functions, promoting deep integration of finance and technology. The two strategic directions complement each other. Retail provides application scenarios and value-landing carriers for technology, while technology injects efficiency improvements and innovation momentum into retail. Together, they will build a new development landscape of “customer-centricity, technology-driven, and quality-first.”

In a critical stage of the banking industry’s transformational hard campaign, Everbright Bank uses its performance briefing as a window to convey firm strategic resolve and a clear development path—not pursuing short-term scale expansion, but focusing on “quality-and-efficiency improvement, capability building, and long-term value.” By strengthening the foundation through retail business and improving efficiency through financial technology empowerment, it charts a high-quality development path aligned with its own strengths. As the effectiveness of the dual-wheel drive of “wealth management + financial technology” continues to release, Everbright Bank is steadily moving toward its strategic goal of becoming “a first-class wealth management bank,” providing practical sample cases for industry transformation.

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