Verification of Brokerage Performance and Industry Transformation Effectiveness

In 2025, the securities industry delivered a “steady progress” performance report: according to data from the China Securities Industry Association, the entire industry’s 150 brokerage firms’ full-year operating revenue surpassed 5400 billion yuan, net profit was close to 2200 billion yuan, and the total asset scale steadily increased to 14.83 trillion yuan.

These impressive figures are inseparable from the improvement in market activity, and are even more driven by the intrinsic momentum released by industry transformation. With performance reflected in a more direct way, I believe the transformation results in areas such as industry structure, international business, and research business are clearly visible, specifically in three aspects.

First, the structure has been optimized, with both concentration among leading players and differentiated breakthroughs advancing in parallel. The most direct feature of brokerage performance in 2025 is the further differentiation of the industry landscape. Leading brokerages, leveraging advantages across the full business chain and capital strength, not only consolidate their core base, but also demonstrate strong resilience in a complex market environment. In 2025, CITIC Securities’ net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company first exceeded 300 billion yuan, its total assets reached the 2 trillion yuan mark, and multiple core businesses remained firmly ranked first in the industry; after Guotai Junan’s merger, Guotai Haitong’s first complete year saw revenue and net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company reach 631 billion yuan and 278 billion yuan, respectively, with the scale effect fully released.

From the perspective of industry concentration—taking revenue as an example—the top ten brokerages’ combined income exceeded 3535.5 billion yuan, accounting for more than 60% of the entire industry. Against the backdrop of continuing increases in industry concentration, misaligned competition has become the key for smaller brokerages to survive. A group of smaller brokerages are achieving breakthroughs by adopting differentiated development strategies; in 2025, several brokerages saw year-on-year growth rates in net profit attributable to shareholders exceed 50%, significantly higher than the industry average. At the same time, some smaller brokerages, relying on wealth management, industrial investment banking, and AI technology empowerment, have carved out distinctive paths for expanding their businesses. This confirms a trend: once you find the right niche track and do deep work to refine professional features, “small but beautiful” differentiated development still holds enormous potential.

Second, international business has achieved breakthroughs, moving from strategic deployment to a growth engine. If domestic business is the basic foundation, then international business has become the second growth curve for leading brokerages. When brokerages “go global,” it is both an inevitable requirement driven by the development of a strong financial country and the high-level opening-up of capital markets, and an important yardstick for measuring whether a brokerage has the potential of a first-class investment bank. In recent years, several brokerages’ international business has delivered performance results. In 2025, CITIC International and Guotai Haitong International achieved net profits of 64 billion yuan and 24 billion yuan respectively, with year-on-year increases of 68% and 80% respectively.

From the perspective of the institutional environment, the improvement of the interconnection mechanism, the ongoing reforms to the QFII/RQFII regime, and pilot programs for cross-border innovative businesses provide brokerages with core infrastructure connecting domestic and overseas markets. In addition, Hong Kong and other emerging markets also offer diversified business development space for brokerages to “go global.” Brokerages’ internationalization is moving from a single-point breakthrough to a historic stage of building end-to-end capability. Of course, at present, China-funded brokerages’ international business deployment is still highly concentrated in Hong Kong, with a client structure mainly comprised of China-funded entities, and investment in capital and resources still needs to be enhanced. As global networks improve and resources such as capital and manpower continue to be injected, international business is expected to grow from a complementary segment into a core growth pole.

Third, under fee-rate reform, research business is returning to its original value. Against the backdrop of the ongoing deepening of public fund fee-rate reform, the competitive landscape in the brokerage research industry is undergoing profound reshaping. In 2025, the total revenue of commissions under research sub-accounts across the entire industry was 110.14 billion yuan, up 0.25% year on year; this is a stabilization and rebound after the “pain” experienced by brokerage research institutes during the transformation.

Fee-rate reform is forcing research business to accelerate its shift from the former “channel + services” model toward “in-depth research + value creation.” The commission model that previously relied on high turnover rates is no longer sustainable. Research institutions are returning to the essence of research and focusing deeply on fundamentals such as macroeconomics, industrial trends, and company value. Judging from the 2025 annual reports of listed brokerages, the share of sub-account commissions is accelerating its concentration among leading brokerages with strong research capabilities. Institutions with traditional strengths in research—such as CITIC Securities and Yangtze Securities—continue to firmly maintain their leading positions, while some smaller brokerages increase their share by achieving deeper coverage in specific industries or fields. At the same time, the synergy between research institutes and business segments such as investment banking, asset management, and wealth management has become increasingly prominent, and research value is shifting from single commission contribution to enabling the entire business chain.

Through the 2025 performance window, what we see is far more than a string of rising numbers. It is a new development picture shaped by the outcomes of industry transformation: scale expansion giving way to deep cultivation of value, and channel dividends yielding to professional pricing. These deeper underlying currents of transformation are the foundation for high-quality industry development, and also a solid footnote to building a first-class investment bank.