Everbright Bank A+H Shares 40 Data Mismatches: One Financial Report with Two Versions | Annual Report Season

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Author｜Li Xin

Editor｜Wu Wentao

One annual report, two versions; data on assets under the 40 branch outlets are collectively misaligned—this information-disclosure incident involving 70-trillion-yuan shareholding system banks is continuing to gain momentum in the capital markets.

01

Miscaligned table rows

On the evening of March 30, Guangda Bank simultaneously disclosed its 2025 annual report on the SSE and the HKEX. After verification, among the bank’s 47 branch institutions disclosed, 40 had significant differences in asset-size figures between the A-share and H-share annual reports; in some branches, the gap reaches several times and even more than ten times.

Among them, the asset size for the Shanghai Branch in the A-share annual report is 70k yuan, while the H-share version is only 443.19B yuan—about an 11.2x difference.

For the Shenzhen Branch, the A-share figure is 39.54B yuan, while the H-share figure is only 286.7B yuan—about a 5.5x difference.

The asset-size figure of 51.88B yuan disclosed in the Qingdao Branch’s H-share report matches exactly the data for the Shanghai Branch in the A-share report, showing a clear misalignment in table row order.

The total assets of the branch institutions summarized in the two annual reports are both 6.99 trillion yuan, ruling out errors in total-quantity calculation; however, the misalignment at 40 points still points directly to omissions in the information-disclosure process.

The two annual reports were audited by KPMG Huazhen and KPMG Hong Kong, respectively, and both issued standard unqualified (clean) audit opinions, yet they failed to catch the large-scale data errors above, prompting market questions about the effectiveness of the audits.

On the evening of April 1, Guangda Bank issued a revised announcement on the HKEX, correcting the asset-size figures of eight core branches so that they align with the A-share annual report.

Behind this data blunder is Guangda Bank’s continuously pressured underlying fundamentals of operations.

The 2025 annual report shows that by year-end, Guangda Bank Group’s total assets were 443.19B yuan, up 2.96% from the end of the prior year, officially entering the 70-trillion-yuan size tier.

The total principal amount of loans and advances was 69.9k yuan, and deposits were 70k yuan, with asset scale continuing to expand steadily.

What contrasts with the growth in scale is its earnings performance: for full-year 2025, the bank generated operating income of 3.98T yuan, down 6.72% year over year, with operating income declining for the fourth consecutive year.

Net profit attributable to the bank’s shareholders was 4.1T yuan, down 6.88% year over year, failing to continue the 2024 trend of stabilizing and then rebounding.

02

A divided landscape

Earnings volatility is concentrated in the fourth quarter: in the first three quarters of 2025, the bank’s quarterly net profit attributable to the parent was consistently above 12 billion yuan; in the fourth quarter, the single-quarter net profit attributable to the parent was only 126.31B yuan, down 44.91% year over year, and with a quarter-over-quarter decline of more than 85%.

The core reason for the change in performance in the fourth quarter is the credit impairment loss provision of 38.83B yuan in a single quarter. This amount is 93% of the total provisions made in the first three quarters, and it accounts for nearly half of the total provisions for the entire year.

For industry comparison: in 2025, Guangda Bank’s net interest margin narrowed to 1.40%, down 14 basis points year over year. This is below the industry average of 1.56% for shareholding system commercial banks, and also below the industry-wide average net interest margin of 1.42%.

The income structure shows clear divergence: full-year net interest income was 1.81B yuan, down 4.72% year over year; and net fee and commission income was 17.59B yuan, up 6.19% year over year—also the only income segment achieving positive growth.

Against a backdrop of earnings pressure, Guangda Bank’s business structure has displayed a divided pattern.

Wealth management is the bank’s core highlight for the full year. In 2025, the nationwide banking wealth management market’s outstanding scale was 3.329 trillion yuan, up 11.15% from the start of the year. Meanwhile, Guangda Bank’s wealth management product scale grew against the trend by 21.66%, with growth far exceeding the industry average.

For the full year, it achieved wealth management service fee income of 6.198 billion yuan, up 61.41%, with this figure accounting for 30.6% of net fee and commission income.

This performance benefits from Guangda’s wealth management arm, which has a first-mover advantage as one of the first wealth-management subsidiaries established by shareholding-system banks, as well as its long-term layout in fixed-income-type products and value-based (net-asset-value) management.

In addition, the bank’s “cloud bill payment” business continues to strengthen its scenario-based barriers, maintaining its industry-leading position as the largest open bill-payment platform in China.

There is obvious pressure in traditional core businesses, with credit business caught in a dilemma of “more volume but lower prices.”

In 2025, corporate loans (excluding discounted bills) had a balance of 92.1B yuan, up 5.73% year over year, but the average yield on corporate loans fell from 3.85% in 2024 to 3.29%.

03

Concentrated exposure

Credit card business has continued to face pressure: in 2025, credit card income fell to 20.25B yuan. The transaction amount dropped from 1.68 trillion yuan in 2024 to 1.48 trillion yuan. Since 2020, income has continued to decline. Although the bank has completed its transformation from centralized in-house management at the head office to location-based management at branches, it still needs time to resolve risks and restore revenue.

The problem of imbalance in the liability structure is prominent. In the bank’s deposit structure, retail deposits account for only 33%, while time deposits account for as much as 63%, leading to an overall customer deposit cost (interest paid rate) of 1.81%.

Combined with the high costs of issuing bonds and interbank financing, the bank’s overall cost of funds (interest paid rate) reaches as high as 1.89%, placing it at a high level among shareholding system banks and constraining the repair of the interest spread.

This annual-report data blunder is a concentrated exposure of long-standing shortcomings in Guangda Bank’s internal control governance system.

As the core carrier for information disclosure by a listed company, the annual report must go through multiple risk-control checkpoints—from data compilation, cross-verification, and departmental review, to executives’ signature, and then audit firms’ verification.

However, the misalignment in 40 data points passed all review steps smoothly, directly reflecting the failure of the bank’s internal-control mechanism for aggregating branch-level data and conducting cross-version cross-checking, revealing gaps in information disclosure management.

This issue is not a one-off. Throughout 2025, Guangda Bank’s head office and branches across regions received cumulative regulatory fines and confiscations exceeding 60 million yuan due to compliance problems, exposing shortcomings in grassroots management and compliant operations.

Among them, the Shenzhen Branch opened rolling bank acceptance bills without genuine trade background; it was ordered to confiscate illegal proceeds of 0.6 million yuan and fined 6.2B yuan. The Dandong Branch had severe shortcomings in the “three checks” for lending; the then general manager was subject to the maximum penalty of a 10-year prohibition from working in the banking industry.

In terms of asset quality: by the end of 2025, the bank’s non-performing loan ratio was 1.27%, up slightly by 0.02 percentage points from the end of the prior year, but there was a clear gap in non-performing loan recognition.

The annual report disclosed that stage-three assets in loans were 70.65 billion yuan, up sharply from the start of the year. However, in the same period, the balance of non-performing loans was only 2.43T yuan. This creates an almost 20 billion yuan “scissor gap.” The coverage ratio for non-performing loan recognition is insufficient, and the gap expanded significantly compared with 2024’s 4.7 billion yuan.

At the same time, the bank’s capacity to offset risks continued to weaken: the allowance coverage ratio fell by 6.45 percentage points year over year to 174.14%. The ratios of loans under watch and delinquent loans rose to 1.85% and 2.13%, respectively—two major forward-looking risk indicators moved upward in tandem.

The practice of making large impairment provisions at year-end reflects the lag in the bank’s risk identification and the timing of provisioning.

04

Double squeeze

The operational and governance difficulties Guangda Bank faces are a microcosm of industry-wide growing pains as shareholding-system banks undergo transformation.

Currently, the banking industry is in a transformation period characterized by narrowing interest spreads, stricter regulation, and accelerating digital transformation. The industry’s development logic has shifted from the past “scale-driven” approach to “value-driven” overall.

From the industry’s fundamentals, interest rate liberalization continues to deepen. Multiple cuts to the LPR, along with adjustments to interest rates on existing mortgage loans, have continued to narrow banks’ net interest margins. By the end of the fourth quarter of 2025, the average net interest margin of commercial banks had fallen to 1.42%, staying flat for three consecutive quarters. The industry as a whole has entered a phase of interest-spread bottoming out, with divergence intensifying.

State-owned banks leverage their branch network advantages and low-cost funding to keep pushing deeper into the market. City commercial banks and rural commercial banks, relying on local resources, focus on regional markets. Shareholding-system banks are facing a competitive landscape of “pressure from both ends.”

The core direction of industry transformation is to develop lighter businesses centered on wealth management and investment banking. Owing to characteristics such as lower capital occupation, lower risk weights, and stable returns, these businesses have become the main path for banks to get rid of reliance on interest spread.

In 2025, the growth rate of China’s banking wealth management market exceeded 11%. The long-term trend of residents’ wealth shifting from real estate toward financial assets is clear, bringing room for growth to banks’ wealth management business.

Meanwhile, regulatory requirements continue to tighten around the quality of banks’ information disclosure, compliant operations, and internal-control governance. In the 2026 annual report disclosure season, aside from Guangda Bank, several other banks—including Bank of Communications and Hangzhou Bank—also saw annual-report disclosure error incidents, reflecting common issues in industry internal-control management and information disclosure quality.

In addition, the problem of non-performing pressure caused by the adjustment in the real estate industry has not been fully cleared. In 2025, the non-performing loan ratios for real-estate-related loans continued to rise at multiple banks, becoming a risk faced industry-wide.

At this crossroad of industry transformation, Guangda Bank’s long-term investment value and market opportunities are deeply intertwined with shortcomings in internal control and operational risks.

From its core strengths, the bank has the synergy advantages of full financial licenses across the Guangda Group; it has first-mover advantages and brand barriers in wealth management, and Guangda Wealth Management remains firmly in the top-tier group.

The “cloud bill payment” business continues to lead in both user scale and transaction scale, with long-term potential for monetization. At present, the bank’s price-to-book ratio is only around 0.4x, at a historical low. With a stable dividend payout ratio of about 30%, it provides a safety cushion for long-term investors.

In terms of market opportunities, the sustained surge in residents’ wealth management needs provides long-term growth space for the bank’s core strength businesses.

Policy-supported areas such as green finance, inclusive finance, and technology finance are highly aligned with the bank’s existing business layout and are expected to become new growth drivers.

In 2026, banks’ net interest margins are expected to bottom out and stabilize. If economic recovery boosts credit demand and improves asset quality, there is room for the bank’s profitability to recover.

Core risks must also not be overlooked. Prominent reputation risk and regulatory penalty risk arise from internal-control and compliance loopholes. This annual-report blunder has already affected market confidence; if the bank cannot systematically repair its internal-control system, it may trigger special regulatory reviews and further reputational crises.

The pressure from narrowing interest spreads has not been fully relieved. The problem of imbalance in the liability structure is difficult to cure in the short term. The credit card business transformation is still in a period of growing pains, so revenue and net profit may continue to face pressure.

Non-performing loan ratios for real-estate-related loans continue to rise, with a large gap in non-performing recognition. If the real estate market recovery fails to meet expectations, it may further erode profits.

The “double squeeze” from state-owned banks and city commercial banks will continue to magnify the bank’s disadvantages in liability costs, network coverage, and regional deep cultivation.

For Guangda Bank, the CEO Hao Cheng’s statement in the performance briefing—“Do what needs to be done even in difficult circumstances; focus on getting things done in practice”—should not be merely a slogan to respond to performance challenges. It should be implemented in closing gaps in internal-control governance, meeting strict requirements for information disclosure, and taking real actions to transform operations.

Only by upholding the baseline of information disclosure with a rigorous, transparent, and responsible attitude—strengthening internal control fundamentals—can the bank truly transition from scale-driven to value-driven and stand firm during industry reshuffling, restore market trust, and achieve long-term and steady development.

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