Brokerage firm earnings presentation focuses on international business and AI empowerment

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As broker-dealers’ 2025 performance gradually comes into view, broker-dealers have recently been holding frequent earnings briefings, responding one by one to investors’ concerns regarding last year’s performance and key strategic plans for the new year. As of April 6, more than 10 broker-dealers, including CITIC Securities and Guotai Huarong, have successively convened earnings briefings. At these meetings, topics such as overseas business development plans and the role of financial technology in empowering operations have become key focus areas for investors.

Competing for a new blue ocean in international business

Internationalization is the only path to building a first-class investment bank. Currently, Chinese broker-dealers are accelerating their overseas business layouts, playing an increasingly important role in areas such as serving mainland companies with overseas financing, cross-border wealth management, and global capital allocation.

Broker-dealer 2025 annual reports show that, among leading Chinese broker-dealers, market share in Hong Kong investment banking, research, and trading services continues to rise, while the proportion of revenue from international business keeps climbing as well—becoming an important pillar of profitability for broker-dealers.

Data from Wind Information shows that in 2025, the year-over-year growth rates of overseas business revenue for nine listed broker-dealers were all at or above 25%. Specifically, China International Capital Corporation (CICC) and CITIC Securities had overseas business revenue shares of 29.47% and 20.73%, respectively. Meanwhile, Haitong Securities and Guotai Huarong both had overseas business revenue shares of over 15%.

At the earnings briefings, major broker-dealers have all disclosed their latest internationalization plans. For example, Wu Chao, a member of the executive committee of CItic Securities’ arm China Securities JianTou, said that in 2026, the company’s subsidiary CITIC Securities International will seek to achieve reasonable earnings growth under strict risk control. In terms of specific measures: first, further stabilize and strengthen the Hong Kong business by focusing on four dimensions—clients, products, channels, and synergy—to enhance the development of a cross-border product system; second, expand overseas deployment by rolling out a global network and hosting internationalization events to enhance brand influence; third, build a strong and efficient middle and back office to support international operations, and strengthen compliance and risk control.

Regarding how to further improve the quality of international operations in the future, Everbright Securities said that in the future the company will deeply implement integrated management across domestic and overseas operations, systematically output capabilities in areas such as domestic investment banking, research, and institutional sales, empower overseas project execution and client conversion, and enhance overseas client service capabilities. In addition, the company will deepen its forward-looking layout in emerging markets, strengthen coordination and linkage across multiple business lines and multiple subsidiaries, prioritize light-asset and partnership-based deployment models, improve resilience and stability of overseas business, and build momentum for long-term development.

In Ttian Wu Securities’ non-bank financial sector view, Sun Ting, chief analyst, believes that overseas business—thanks to higher profitability efficiency—has the potential to become a core engine for Chinese broker-dealers to enhance overall ROE (return on equity) and add to earnings.

Chen Yinhua, president of the West China Finance Research Institute, told reporters from The Securities Daily: “Since last year, broker-dealers have increased capital into overseas subsidiaries in a concentrated way and strengthened cooperation with overseas institutions in areas such as research, reflecting the industry trend that Chinese broker-dealers are proactively expanding strategic investment and racing to open up overseas markets. Currently, leading broker-dealers have already gained some first-mover advantages in the ‘going global’ track. With high overseas business revenue growth in 2025 and standout performance, small and medium broker-dealers are accelerating their entry. Overall, the internationalization path for Chinese broker-dealers is entering a strategic opportunity window, and the future outlook for industry international business revenue growth is broad.”

Deeply cultivating financial technology

Beyond the internationalization strategy, empowering operations with financial technology has also become an important lever for broker-dealers to build differentiated competitive advantages and open up incremental space for performance. Currently, the digital transformation of the securities industry is accelerating day by day, and the deep application of AI technology has shifted from a “optional item” to a “required item” for improving operational quality and efficiency.

Multiple leading broker-dealers have already taken action first. At the earnings briefing, Zhou Yi, CEO and head of the executive committee of Huatai Securities, said that last year, Huatai Securities officially established the “All in AI” strategy, and 2026 is the key year for Huatai Securities to initiate a comprehensive intelligent transformation and build the core capabilities for the future. Huatai Securities will drive business reconfiguration and organizational evolution with AI: on one hand, it will strengthen the data, computing power, and model foundation, integrate capabilities across the entire business chain and data into a financial middle platform, and build a Huatai-themed industry map to achieve comprehensive coverage of key tracks and their upstream, midstream, and downstream; on the other hand, the company will rely on the financial middle platform to drive the restructuring and upgrading of business segments such as wealth management, asset management, institutional services, and investment banking.

While leading broker-dealers are rolling out AI strategies across the board, small and medium broker-dealers are also actively exploring financial technology paths that fit their own endowments. For example, in recent years, Hualin Securities has continuously increased dedicated investment into the research and deployment of Dolphin AI finance vertical large models. It is currently building an intelligent computing foundation to create a dedicated inference resource pool for Dolphin AI finance vertical large models, while also building an integrated service system for intelligent customer service and stock-intelligence agents, in order to shorten service chains and improve customer response efficiency.

Similarly, Orient Securities has focused on building an “Orient Brain intelligent computing power cluster,” continuously advancing the local deployment of mainstream AI large models, collecting requirements from lines such as big-wealth, big investment banking, and big institutional business, and accelerating practical implementation, thereby continuously improving the company’s level of artificial intelligence development. Specifically, in the wealth management segment, it builds a digital service matrix ranging from intelligent investment advisors and intelligent news to intelligent customer service; in the investment banking segment, it has launched an intelligent document review system and a data analysis platform, building a full-life-cycle view of investment banking business and creating a digital investment bank.

To accelerate the application of cutting-edge technologies, in recent years broker-dealers have been competing to increase the intensity of resource investment. According to a review, in 2025, Guotai Huarong’s total information technology investment amounted to 3.24B yuan; Huatai Securities’ information technology investment was 2.68B yuan; China Merchants Securities’ information technology investment was 1.91B yuan, up 20.58% year over year; the information technology investments of the China Galaxy and Shenwan Hongyuan were both above 1 billion yuan; and Hongta Securities’ information technology investment reached 191 million yuan, accounting for 10.96% of the previous year’s operating revenue.

“As the digital transformation process in the securities industry accelerates, broker-dealers’ ability to apply financial technology and their level of intelligent services have become key factors affecting broker-dealers’ core competitiveness.” Zhang Ning, director of the China Financial Technology Research Center at Central University of Finance and Economics, told reporters from The Securities Daily. “Currently, technologies such as AI large models, big data, and cloud computing are permeating the broker-dealer business chains in an all-round way, and application scenarios such as intelligent investment advisory, intelligent research reports, and intelligent risk control are becoming increasingly mature. In the future, broker-dealers should further deepen financial technology, improve operating quality and efficiency with differentiated and intelligent services, and build a unique competitive ‘moat.’”

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