China Merchants Bank, which made 150 billion yuan in profit, has employees who "rarely leave work on time"? The chairman is too straightforward.

Ask AI · Why employee dedication doesn’t drop even as per-capita compensation declines?

Produced by | Damo Finance

A remark by the chairman of China Merchants Bank about employees working overtime has drawn widespread attention.

On March 30, China Merchants Bank (600036.SH) held an earnings briefing, where the bank’s chairman, Miao Jianmin, said that in the past, many people inside China Merchants Bank believed that retail business and financial technology were the company’s moat. However, the real moat of China Merchants Bank is that the customer-centric philosophy is internalized into corporate culture and transformed into employees’ daily behaviors.

Miao Jianmin said, “Our colleagues rarely clock out on time, because philosophy, operations, and technology all are driven by people. If we didn’t have this culture, cohesion, and spirit of professional dedication, the other moats would slowly collapse.”

After China Merchants Bank’s earnings briefing, the #招商银行董事长称员工很少准时下班# entry quickly climbed onto the hot search, sparking heated discussions among netizens.

Worth noting is that in 2025, China Merchants Bank’s employee compensation also declined. China Merchants Bank’s 2025 financial report shows that last year China Merchants Bank’s staff compensation (calculated by employee expenses) was 68.689 billion yuan, up 0.88% from 68.088 billion yuan in the same period of the previous year.

But in 2024, China Merchants Bank had 117,201 employees, with per-capita compensation of 581,000 yuan. In 2025, the bank’s employees increased to 121,585, and per-capita compensation fell to 564,900 yuan. After experiencing two consecutive years of declines in operating revenue, although China Merchants Bank’s 2025 revenue growth rebounded, things are still not easy.

Back to double growth

On March 27, China Merchants Bank disclosed its annual report showing that by the end of 2025, the bank’s total assets reached 13.07 trillion yuan, up 7.56%; full-year operating revenue was 337.532 billion yuan, up 0.01%; and net profit attributable to shareholders was 150.181 billion yuan, up 1.21%.

Affected by the low interest-rate environment, intensifying industry competition, and other factors, China Merchants Bank saw two consecutive years of negative operating revenue growth in 2023 and 2024, with year-over-year declines of 1.64% and 0.48%, respectively. During this period, although net profit attributable to shareholders maintained positive growth, the growth rate clearly slowed down. In 2023, the year-over-year increase in net profit attributable to shareholders was still 6.22%, but in 2024 it shrank to 1.22%.

China Merchants Bank’s profitability performance in 2025 may not have returned to its past high-growth posture. Still, with operating revenue ending its downward trend, it released a “signal” that things are gradually stabilizing.

China Merchants Bank’s “turnaround” in operating revenue mainly came from net interest income. In 2025, the bank’s net interest income reached 215.593 billion yuan, up 2.04%, contributing 63.87% of operating revenue. The net interest margin was 1.87%. Although it continued to decline by 0.11 percentage points year over year, the rate of decline has already narrowed.

Of course, this improvement was not accidental—it resulted from China Merchants Bank’s combined effects on both the asset side and the liability side.

On the asset side, although the average yield on interest-earning assets was lower than in 2024, the size of interest-earning assets continued to expand. Last year, the average balance of interest-earning assets increased 8.16% year over year, offsetting some of the pressure from falling interest rates.

On the liability side, the average cost rate of customer deposits fell from 1.54% in 2024 to 1.17% in 2025. As a result, customer deposit interest expense decreased 17.55% year over year, and low-cost deposits, to a certain extent, weakened the impact of the narrowing interest margin on interest income.

In response to the positive changes in the net interest margin, Peng Jiawen, vice president of China Merchants Bank, further stated at the earnings briefing that in 2026, the bank’s net interest margin would continue to narrow, though the extent of narrowing is expected to be better than in 2025.

Last year, China Merchants Bank’s non-interest net income was 121.939 billion yuan, down 3.38% year over year. The main reasons were a decrease in fair value from bond investments and non-monetary fund investments, which led to fair value change gains of -81.60 billion yuan, decreasing by 14.245 billion yuan year over year.

Retail shows some recovery

In recent years, banks’ retail businesses have faced heavy headwinds due to fluctuations in residents’ income, a downturn in real estate, asset value depreciation, the narrowing of interest margins, and shrinking mortgage scales. China Merchants Bank’s wealth management business showed some recovery in 2025, but retail business pressure remains.

By the end of 2025, China Merchants Bank’s total personal loan balance was 3.72 trillion yuan, up 2%. The growth rate has clearly slowed compared with prior years. Moreover, China Merchants Bank’s personal loans as a share fell to below 52% in 2025, the first time since 2020.

From the customer perspective, China Merchants Bank’s overall retail customer base continued to expand further. Last year, the total number of retail customers exceeded 220 million, up 6.67% from the end of the previous year. And the managed retail customers’ total assets under management (AUM) exceeded 17 trillion yuan, up 14.44% from the end of the previous year, with more than 2 trillion yuan added during the year, setting a record high.

In China Merchants Bank’s retail business, the most obvious pressure is still in the credit card business, which used to be thriving.

In terms of the credit card circulation size indicator, after China Merchants Bank’s number of active credit cards reached a peak of 103 million cards in 2022, it declined year by year. In 2025, it was 97.451 million cards. Last year, the bank achieved credit card transaction volume of 408.0 billion yuan, down 7.62% year over year; and it recorded credit card interest income of 59.660 billion yuan, also down 7.30% year over year.

The good news is that China Merchants Bank’s large wealth management business finally saw a turnaround after two consecutive years of decline.

In 2020, China Merchants Bank proposed the “large wealth management” philosophy and accelerated its transition into a lighter asset bank. However, starting in 2022, pressures in its large wealth management also began to show. Net fee and commission income declined for three consecutive years. Influenced by a series of negative factors such as fee reductions and the passing on of benefits, reductions in distribution fees, reductions in management fee rates, and reductions in custody fee rates. In 2023 and 2024, China Merchants Bank experienced two consecutive years of single-digit-to-double-digit slowdown in growth rates.

In 2025, China Merchants Bank’s large wealth management income reached 44.013 billion yuan, up 16.91% from 2024.

Among them, wealth management fee and commission income was 26.711 billion yuan, up 21.39%. In detail: distribution of wealth management products income was 9.347 billion yuan, up 18.98%; fund distribution income was 5.846 billion yuan, up 40.36%; distribution of trust plans income was 3.518 billion yuan, up 65.55%; securities transaction agency income was 1.801 billion yuan, up 62.55%; and insurance agency income was 5.823 billion yuan, down 9.37%, becoming the only area with negative growth among the major sub-items.

China Merchants Bank also explained in its financial report that the above growth was mainly driven by the increase in distribution scale and the continued optimization of product structure, along with multiple factors such as year-over-year increases in the size and sales volume of equity-based funds and the recovery in market demand.

At the earnings meeting, Miao Jianmin also proposed the philosophy of “Restart retail, and surpass in corporate business again.” Among them, “Restart retail” includes three aspects: improving the quality of assets, consolidating liabilities, and taking wealth management to a new level—especially, “one major breakthrough for retail in the future is wealth management.”