Bank wealth management shows strong growth and increasing differentiation. The new issuance scale of Bank of Communications' rights-included products has tripled.

21st Century Business Herald reporter Yu Jixin

As 2025 annual reports for the banking industry are released in large batches, each bank’s annual “answer sheet” for asset management business has also begun to take shape.

After reviewing findings reported by 21st Century Business Herald, the reporter found that in wealth management, in the past year, banks’ wealth management scale has shown a clear “icy and fiery” pattern. On the one hand, several banks represented by Huaxia Bank saw their wealth management business scale achieve high growth, with year-over-year growth as high as 45.82%, leading the market. On the other hand, many institutions also saw their wealth management scale decline year over year.

In terms of total scale, China Merchants Bank remained at the top of the industry with more than 2.6 trillion yuan in wealth management assets, and the number of banks with wealth management scale in the trillion-yuan range has expanded to 13. Notably, in the latest strategic statements by various banks regarding asset management business, covered-call products and multi-strategy deployment have become a “hot topic” repeatedly mentioned.

Regarding wealth management business. A senior research and investment person at a wealth management subsidiary of a city commercial bank told our reporter that the main drivers behind the widespread growth in 2025 bank wealth management business scale are that a cut in deposit rates has driven the “migration of deposits,” and residents’ funds have continued to flow into the wealth management product market. Meanwhile, after the regulator prohibited “rankings” for promotion, institutions that do not rely on such marketing methods instead gained relatively favorable conditions, and “off-platform distribution channels have been further opened,” which has also brought inflows of funds to some institutions.

A senior practitioner in product management at a Shanghai wealth management subsidiary told the reporter that, given the regulatory requirement to reduce wealth management products without licenses, the overall true growth momentum of the wealth management business is actually “stronger” than what the financial statements may indicate. As for the differences in performance among different institutions, he believes that against the backdrop of an overall improvement in the industry, instances where some institutions fail to achieve growth are often due to their specific reasons—such as strategic adjustments by the parent bank that may lead to a passive contraction of scale.

Asset management sector sees growth across the board

Based on the 2025 financial reports that had been disclosed as of the time of publication, the reporter at 21st Century Business Herald found that bank wealth management business overall shows a pattern of most expanding and a few contracting: industry-leading institutions’ scale continues to expand, while some smaller and midsize banks face transformation challenges involving scale reduction.

For the scale of wealth management across the bank, by the end of 2025, China Merchants Bank ranked first in the market with a wealth management scale of 26,437.50 billion yuan, becoming the first bank in wealth management to cross the 2.6 trillion yuan threshold. Banks including Industrial Bank, CITIC, Agricultural Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, Everbright, Bank of Communications, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Minsheng, and Postal Savings Bank also maintained wealth management scale at the trillion-yuan level last year, and together with CMB formed a stable top-tier lineup of 13 banks.

In terms of growth rate, market differentiation is even more pronounced.

Among them, Huaxia Bank’s wealth management scale rose sharply from 8,332.93 billion yuan at the end of 2024 to 12,151.17 billion yuan at the end of 2025, successfully moving onto a new 1.2 trillion yuan plateau. The year-over-year growth rate reached 45.82%, far outpacing others. Minsheng Bank, China Post Savings Bank, and Zhejiang Commercial Bank also posted strong growth rates of 29.80%, 28.81%, and 26.20% respectively, all exceeding 25%. In addition, Everbright Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, and Huishang Bank also achieved year-over-year double-digit growth exceeding 10%.

By contrast, some banks saw their wealth management scale contract year over year. Further observation indicates that whether to establish a wealth management subsidiary is one of the key factors influencing scale changes. Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank’s decline in this business reached 12.26%, with scale falling from 1,783.96 billion yuan at the end of 2024 to 1,565.24 billion yuan in 2025; over the same period, Bank of Central Plains fell 9.80% and Tianjin Bank fell 4.03%. Industry observers believe that in the future, resources for bank wealth management business will further concentrate toward leading banks and licensed wealth management subsidiaries, while smaller and midsize banks will need to seek a new balance between “downsizing” and “transformation.”

A bank group’s asset management capability is reflected not only in wealth management business. Its subsidiaries such as funds, trusts, and insurance asset management also constitute an important dimension of its comprehensive asset management capability. Based on the annual report disclosures, they have generally achieved growth.

Within China Merchants Bank, the combined total size of asset management businesses of CMB Wealth Management, China Merchants Fund, China Merchants Trust, and CMB International amounted to 4.71 trillion yuan, up 5.13% from the end of the previous year. Among them, CMB Wealth Management’s balance of wealth management products was 2.64 trillion yuan, up 6.88% from the end of the previous year; the asset management business scale of China Merchants Fund was 1.59 trillion yuan, up 1.27%; China Merchants Trust’s asset management business scale was 3,184.26 billion yuan, up 4.17%; and CMB International’s asset management business scale was 1,642.41 billion yuan, up 26.02%.

Among Industrial Bank’s subsidiaries, wealth management, fund, and trust businesses grew faster. In particular, Industrial Trust’s asset management scale was 8,504.82 billion yuan, up significantly by 110.29% from the end of the previous year; Industrial Fund’s asset management scale was 5,147.73 billion yuan, up 25.30%.

Covered-call products are a key area of deployment

The growth in 2025 bank wealth management scale benefited not only from deposit migration and channel expansion, but also from the relatively favorable market environment of the year—especially the rebound of the equities market—which provided an extra boost to improving returns on wealth management products and attracting funds. In their annual reports, several banks explicitly stated that developing covered-call products (i.e., products whose investment portfolios include equity assets) and multi-strategy products is an important strategic direction.

Bank of Communications said that last year it continuously enriched the supply of product and service offerings. The number of newly issued covered-call products increased by one time throughout the year, and the growth rate of newly issued scale exceeded 300%. In its annual report, CITIC Bank’s Xin Yin Wealth Management clearly elaborated its strategy of “striving to be an important supplier of covered-call products.” By the end of 2025, Xin Yin Wealth Management’s outstanding scale of covered-call products reached 3,374.61 billion yuan, up by a substantial 1,489.59 billion yuan from the end of the previous year. The proportion of new products rose markedly from 9.68% to 14.70%.

China Merchants Bank noted that as the equity market rebounded in 2025, clients’ risk appetite showed marginal improvement, increasing their willingness to allocate to covered-call wealth management products. CMB Wealth Management actively promoted a diversified covered-call strategy layout, strengthening its deployment in medium-to-long-term and multi-asset, multi-strategy products.

Huaxia Bank mentioned that Huaxia Wealth Management has continued to increase its efforts to concentrate investments in equities, and it has formed a precise layout across four directions: broad-market index enhancement, dividends, technology, and Hong Kong stocks.

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China also stated that ICBC Wealth Management adheres to multi-market, multi-asset, and multi-strategy deployment, and strengthens innovation in covered-call and medium-to-long-term products. From the investment portfolio of ICBC Wealth Management: both the amount and proportion of highly liquid assets such as cash, deposits, and purchased-and-resold types have increased significantly. At the same time, the amount of “other assets” covering equity-type assets, financial derivatives, etc. has grown significantly. Within fixed-income assets, however, the allocation share of standard bonds has declined somewhat—meaning that, while ensuring liquidity safety, it appropriately reduces reliance on traditional bonds and actively “seeks returns” from diversified assets such as equities.

In addition to diversified allocations, there are different views within the industry on performance growth. The aforementioned senior practitioner at a wealth management subsidiary in Shanghai told the reporter that last year, the overall growth in the wealth management market scale was about 11%. A deeper-level reason is that “wealth management products can, through strategy arrangements, defer the realization of capital gains brought by falling interest rates,” thereby achieving a more competitive return profile compared with deposits. However, there are doubts about this operation from a compliance perspective—“which is also closely related to the regulator’s push to compress closing price valuation methods, etc.”

He believes that the scale growth in 2025 has “little relationship” with the development of covered-call products. Instead, the future development approach for wealth management business will inevitably be to move toward coordinated development of multiple assets and multiple strategies under a low interest-rate environment. In actual operations, companies will continue to put effort into controlling product volatility and pursuing stable returns, actively looking for new assets or investment tools that can meet the stable needs of wealth management clients.

In the long run, bank wealth management still needs to stick to its own positioning to stabilize the basic performance. That is, it reflects the general consensus in the industry that it must seek a sustainable balance between pursuing returns and managing risks, and between innovation exploration and customer experience. Covered-call products are an important tool for enhancing banks’ asset management capabilities and adding to returns, but they are absolutely not a “miracle medicine” that ignores risk or expands blindly. Stable development will remain the main tone of the industry’s development.

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Editor: Qin Yi