Technology strengthens risk control, industry opens up space, CITIC Baixin Bank enters a critical period of transformation

Ask AI · Why has industry financial transformation become a new growth engine for banks?

Produced by | Zhongfang.com

Reviewed by | Li Xiaoyan

As the country’s first and only licensed independent legal person direct bank, CITIC Bixin Bank has been driven by the dual engines of “Finance + Technology” since its establishment in 2017 through a joint initiative by CITIC Bank and Baidu, continuously exploring a distinctive development path that is purely online and inclusive. By 2025, the bank delivered an annual report card of “steady growth in scale, optimized structure, technological empowerment, and accelerated transformation”: total assets reached 128.09B yuan, revenue increased to 5.93B yuan, a year-on-year growth of 28.17%, demonstrating strong resilience in business expansion. Despite multiple factors such as industry net interest margin compression, phased pressure on asset quality, and historical compliance rectifications, the full-year net profit was 453 million yuan, down 30.52% year-on-year, but the bank advanced structural adjustments with strategic resolve, strengthened risk management through technological empowerment, and opened new growth curves via industry finance. The short-term pain contains long-term positive momentum, steadily moving toward a new stage of high-quality development.

Solid foundation for scale leap, increasingly distinctive inclusive nature

After eight years of deep cultivation, CITIC Bixin Bank has grown from a startup into a digital inclusive benchmark with assets exceeding one trillion yuan and serving over ten million users, continuously consolidating its development base. At its inception, the bank’s revenue was only 42 million yuan, with total assets less than 10 billion yuan; by 2024, revenue surpassed 4.6 billion yuan, and total assets stabilized above 12.77B yuan; in 2025, it reached a new level with nearly 6 billion yuan in revenue and steady expansion of asset scale. This eight-year leap in scale confirms the vitality of the direct bank model.

As a digital bank with a state-owned background, the bank has always adhered to its original mission of inclusiveness, focusing on serving the real economy and benefiting people’s livelihoods. In consumer finance, it continuously optimizes its main proprietary product “Hao Huihua,” targeting scenarios such as wholesale retail, catering and accommodation, and cultural tourism. By 2025, it had disbursed 200k yuan, using purely online and convenient services to meet residents’ daily consumption credit needs. In the inclusive micro and small enterprise sector, it precisely addresses the pain points of “difficult, slow, and expensive” financing for small micro businesses, launching digital products like “Entrepreneurship Guarantee Loan” and “Business Loan,” relying on data modeling to achieve “one-minute approval, fully online disbursement, and flexible repayment,” efficiently matching the short-term, urgent capital needs of micro enterprises. By the end of 2025, the balance of inclusive micro loans reached 12.768 billion yuan, a sharp increase of 40.29% from the previous year, far exceeding industry average growth, becoming the main force serving micro enterprises.

From a business structure perspective, the bank actively reduces reliance on individual consumer loans, which accounted for 84.09% of total loans in 2022, gradually decreasing to 72.95% by mid-2025. Meanwhile, diversified businesses such as operating loans, micro loans, and auto finance work together, making the business mix more balanced and significantly enhancing resilience to economic cycles. This development path of “building a solid foundation with scale, expanding space through inclusiveness, and resisting risks through structural optimization” lays a solid foundation for responding to industry challenges.

Short-term profit pressure is industry common, phased adjustments caused by multiple factors

The decline in net profit in 2025 is a result of the combined impact of the macro environment, industry cycle, and the bank’s own transformation adjustments, showing clear phased characteristics and not indicating deterioration of the fundamental business.

Externally, the domestic banking industry continues to experience a cycle of narrowing net interest margins, with declining market interest rates, intensified loan pricing competition, and rigid liability costs squeezing profitability. As a direct bank whose main income source is credit interest, CITIC Bixin Bank is similarly affected by these industry-wide factors, with pressure on net interest income growth becoming the core reason for profit decline.

Internally, firstly, asset quality faces phased pressure. Rapid expansion of consumer loans in early years has entered a risk release period, coupled with slow industry recovery, leading to increased customer default risks. The bank has accordingly increased provisions and intensified non-performing asset disposal, directly impacting current profits. Secondly, compliance rectification and increased technology investment. In 2025, the bank implemented rectifications for historical business issues, improved internal control systems, and continued to increase R&D in AI risk control and intelligent services, with cumulative technology investments exceeding 1.5 billion yuan from 2023 to 2025, incurring short-term costs for long-term capability enhancement. Thirdly, costs related to strategic transformation. New businesses like industry finance and microfinance are still in cultivation, with significant early-stage investments in customer acquisition, product development, and scenario building, which have not yet generated large-scale profits, showing a pattern of “high input, slow return.”

More notably, the bank has proactively adopted a series of countermeasures: reducing high-risk loan facilitation collaborations, optimizing loan pricing strategies, strictly controlling operating costs, and strengthening asset recovery. Profitability showed signs of stabilization in the second half of 2025. This profit adjustment is a necessary pain for “risk reduction, structural adjustment, compliance strengthening, and future resilience,” clearing obstacles for subsequent steady development.

Deepening technological empowerment, comprehensive upgrade of risk control and compliance

As a benchmark of “Finance + Technology” integration, CITIC Bixin Bank always regards technological innovation as its core competitive advantage. In 2025, it achieved major breakthroughs in intelligent services, risk control, and operations, using digitalization to strengthen risk defenses and improve service quality.

In intelligent services, it pioneered the industry with the “Lingxi” intent recognition agent based on mini-programs, leveraging large model technology to realize “one-sentence business processing,” covering over 20 high-frequency scenarios such as account inquiries, proof issuance, and repayment consultation, automatically resolving over 90% of customer service inquiries, improving service efficiency by 80%, and greatly enhancing user experience. It also launched the “User Cube” project, building holographic user profiles, increasing microcredit approval efficiency by 65%, and winning the “Best Data and Analytics Infrastructure in China” award from Asia Banker.

In intelligent risk control, it has built a full lifecycle digital risk management system. Upgrading the “Bixin Fen 8.0” model, adding over 5,000 risk features, increasing risk recognition accuracy by 30%; jointly launching the industry’s first self-evolving “AlphaMo” risk control agent with Baidu, automating data mining, model training, and deployment iteration processes, significantly improving development efficiency, and forming a closed-loop of “proactive warning, intelligent interception, and dynamic adjustment.” It also strengthened partner management, optimized joint loan risk-sharing mechanisms, reduced high-risk loan facilitation, and increased self-operated loans to over 70%, significantly enhancing autonomous risk control capabilities.

In compliance and internal control, it faces historical issues squarely and implements rectifications comprehensively. After regulatory penalties in 2025, the bank established a special rectification team to clear issues related to internet loans and data reporting from 2021-2023, improved internal control processes with over 120 measures, strengthened senior management accountability, and built a “comprehensive, full-process, all-staff” compliance management system. All rectifications have been completed, with an improved internal control mechanism, laying a solid compliance foundation for business development.

Strategic transformation anchored in industry finance, new growth curves accelerating formation

In response to industry changes, CITIC Bixin Bank clarified its strategic shift in 2024, making industry finance the key to breaking through, shifting from “mainly personal consumer loans” to “dual-driven by consumer finance and industry finance,” from “traffic-driven” to “industry-enabled,” opening a differentiated growth path.

In micro and small enterprise finance, it has built a “product + scenario + technology” integrated service system. Deepening industries such as catering, commerce, and cultural tourism, launching scenario-based customized products, leveraging CITIC Group’s industry resources and Baidu’s ecosystem traffic, breaking data barriers across “supply chain - sales chain - capital chain,” achieving precise customer acquisition and intelligent risk control. By 2025, microloan growth exceeded 40%, with over 200k customers, becoming a core engine of transformation.

In auto finance, relying on the “BaiCheDai” product, collaborating with automakers, dealers, and mobility platforms, it has created an “online application, automatic approval, quick disbursement” auto consumption and operational financing service. By 2025, the business balance exceeded 8 billion yuan, a 50% increase, establishing advantages in niche segments.

In ecological cooperation, it deepens partnerships with CITIC Bank, Baidu, Meituan, Kuaishou, Qifu Technology, and 79 other leading platforms, upgrading from “fund lending” to “technology + finance” joint empowerment, co-creating scenarios, sharing data, and jointly controlling risks. It also leverages shareholder advantages to expand supply chain finance with CITIC Bank, serving core enterprises’ upstream and downstream micro clients, forming a “corporate + micro, online and offline linkage” business pattern.

Navigating cycles steadily, with promising future in quality and efficiency

Short-term profit adjustments do not alter CITIC Bixin Bank’s long-term positive trend. The bank has entered a virtuous cycle of “steady scale growth, structural optimization, risk controllability, and effective transformation”: assets exceeding one trillion yuan, net assets over 100 billion yuan, capital adequacy maintained at a reasonable level, and risk mitigation capabilities solid; quality and efficiency of consumer finance improved, industry finance rapidly scaled; AI technology deeply empowered, risk control and service capabilities leading the industry; compliance rectified, operations returning to a stable track.

Looking ahead, the bank will continue to uphold its positioning as a “Digital Inclusive Bank,” deepen its three major strategies: first, structural optimization—continuously reducing high-risk businesses, expanding inclusive micro, auto finance, and industry finance, increasing the proportion of proprietary business, and building a balanced, diversified income structure. Second, technology-driven—advancing large model, privacy computing, AI risk control applications, promoting “technology capability productization and service intelligence,” creating core technological barriers. Third, compliance and stability—strengthening internal control and compliance with a “zero tolerance” attitude, strictly guarding the risk bottom line, and promoting compliance and development in tandem.

As a pioneer among domestic direct banks, CITIC Bixin Bank is confidently navigating industry cycles through strategic resilience, using transformation and innovation to break growth bottlenecks. Short-term pain is a necessary phase for high-quality development. As structural optimization takes effect, new business profits are released, and technological dividends emerge, the bank is expected to accelerate its shift from “scale expansion” to “quality and efficiency improvement,” maintaining steady progress in the digital inclusive finance arena and providing a vibrant example for the digital transformation of the banking industry.