CITIC Bank Jixin Year: Overall Retail Asset Quality is Under Control; a Three-Pronged Approach Promotes Stabilization and Improvement

On March 23, financial frontline news: CITIC Bank held its 2025 annual performance briefing today. Vice President Jin Xinian stated that retail asset risks in the banking industry are generally under pressure. CITIC Bank’s retail asset quality can be broadly categorized into three situations, with overall risk being controllable.

First, mortgage loan asset quality has stabilized. The non-performing mortgage rate is 0.41%, down 0.08 percentage points from last year; the bad debt formation rate is 0.29%, down 0.47 percentage points from the high point in the past two years, operating at a low level for the year. Mortgages account for 47.5% of retail loans, serving as the ballast and mainstay of retail assets, with significant structural adjustments and optimization in recent years.

Second, the risk trend for consumer loans (trust loans, car loans) is improving. Due to the clearance of tail-end customers and CITIC Bank’s proactive restructuring leading to a decline in loan scale, the non-performing rates for car loans and trust loans have increased slightly, but the bad debt formation rate has decreased.

Third, mortgage-backed business loans and credit cards are still stabilizing and are current management challenges, comparable to the overall industry situation. Forward-looking indicators have shown signs of improvement.

Jin Xinian pointed out that CITIC Bank is focusing on three areas to control retail asset quality: First, development—resolving risks during growth, focusing on independent customer acquisition capabilities, and driving stock optimization through incremental growth. Second, management—strictly controlling access, managing customer behavior, preventing operational risks and intermediary risks, strengthening independent risk control capabilities, deepening business and risk joint prevention and control mechanisms, enhancing digital risk management, and accelerating the iteration and upgrade of risk control strategies. Third, disposal—allocating more resources to risk resolution, with 70% of write-off resources last year used for resolving retail non-performing assets; strengthening collection teams, expanding disposal methods, increasing CITIC Group’s coordination efforts, and speeding up the clearance of existing risks.

Jin Xinian stated that in the future, with the implementation of national policies to stabilize growth and promote consumption, improvements in residents’ income and asset-liability restructuring, coupled with CITIC Bank’s continuous enhancement of retail credit risk management capabilities, it is believed that retail asset quality will gradually stabilize and improve.