CITIC Bank Gu Lingyun: The Upward and Positive Momentum of Corporate Banking Business in 2026 Will Not Change

March 23 Financial Frontline News: CITIC Bank held its 2025 Annual Performance Release Conference today. Vice President Gu Lingyun stated that the current real economy is in a period of transition from old to new driving forces. Developing in line with the trend will generate stronger momentum, while going against the trend will face significant resistance; high-quality clients and projects are always scarce, and the key lies in having clear goals and targeted strategies.

Gu Lingyun introduced CITIC Bank’s next phase corporate banking development approach, summarized as balancing two markets: preparing early, seizing opportunities, improving efficiency, and expanding share in the new incremental market driven by new momentum; and focusing on refined management, strategic adjustments, structural optimization, and quality enhancement in the existing stock market. The next steps will focus on three main areas.

First, maintaining asset deployment without relaxation, unwaveringly increasing credit asset allocation, and focusing on improving services to the real economy; second, steadfast cost control, strengthening payment and settlement services, optimizing deposit structures, strictly managing deposit costs, and maintaining our cost advantage; third, continuously building differentiated advantages, centering on five major areas—capital markets, cross-border finance, government affairs finance, treasury management, fund supervision, and supply chain—creating differentiation and forming comparative advantages. The goal is to achieve comprehensive functional coverage, ensuring we have what others lack, while also enhancing competitiveness in niche fields, excelling where others are weak, and standing out with versatile and differentiated corporate services.

Gu Lingyun summarized that CITIC Bank’s core competitive advantages in corporate banking include five aspects: 1) strategic leadership, providing stability and certainty; 2) a solid foundation in government and state-owned enterprise cooperation; 3) synergies within CITIC Group; 4) leading cost control—corporate deposit costs are about 20 basis points lower than industry average, approaching industry best, and the corporate loan-deposit spread has been about 50 basis points above industry average year after year, with low-cost, wide-spread margins providing room for growth; 5) systemic support—efficient cooperation across all sectors, departments, branches, and subsidiaries, forming a comprehensive and clear corporate client and product matrix.

Gu Lingyun emphasized that CITIC Bank’s corporate banking operations are stable and resilient against economic cycles, and the positive trend for corporate business in 2026 will remain unchanged.