Liu Junyu has received approval to serve as Deputy Governor of Sichuan Rural Commercial United Bank Co., Ltd. from the National Financial Regulatory Administration's Sichuan Bureau.
The approval document mandates that Liu Junyu assume his position within three months.
This appointment brings the total number of deputy governors approved for the bank since the start of 2025 to four. The previous three appointees were Du Lingyan, Xia Haochun, and Guo Jialian.
With these new additions joining existing deputy governors Zheng Lixin and Jiang Lin, along with Chairman Ai Yubin and President Wang Tao, the bank's senior leadership team now comprises 11 members.
Established in late January 2024 with a registered capital of 22 billion yuan, this provincial-level united bank, which succeeded the former Sichuan Provincial Rural Credit Cooperatives Union, has largely completed its deputy governor-level appointments by the third year of its operation.
Born in May 1981, Liu Junyu is a graduate of Southwest University of Finance and Economics, majoring in accounting. His career has spanned the public finance system and two provincial-level banks.
He previously held positions such as Deputy Director of the Financial Capital Management Department at the Sichuan Provincial Department of Finance. After joining Sichuan Bank, he served in roles including Director of the Party Committee Office, General Office, and Trade Union Office, as well as Deputy Secretary of the Bank's Directly Affiliated Party Committee and Secretary of the Directly Affiliated Discipline Inspection Commission.
He was appointed as the Board Secretary of Sichuan Bank in July 2024 and also served as Chairman of the City Commercial Bank Working Committee of the Sichuan Banking Association. In November 2025, Sichuan Bank announced Liu Junyu's resignation from the Board Secretary position due to a work transfer.
It is noteworthy that both Sichuan Bank and Sichuan Rural Commercial United Bank are institutions within the provincial state-owned financial system of Sichuan.
An industry veteran familiar with small and medium-sized bank reforms in Sichuan noted that Liu Junyu's transfer represents an internal personnel movement within the provincial state-owned financial system, rather than a market-driven recruitment.
His career path, moving from a financial capital management role in the provincial finance department to overseeing corporate governance and board affairs at Sichuan Bank, and now to a deputy governor role at the united bank, reflects personnel exchanges among provincial financial institutions, particularly in areas of corporate governance and financial management.
The source further pointed out that Liu Junyu's accounting background and experience at the finance department provide him with a professional foundation in financial management and capital operations. His experience as a board secretary at Sichuan Bank, where he participated in corporate governance system development, could offer valuable insights for Sichuan Rural Commercial United Bank as it advances reforms of city and county-level rural commercial banks.
Among the four deputy governors appointed since 2025, Du Lingyan, Xia Haochun, and Guo Jialian were all promoted from within the system of Sichuan Rural Commercial United Bank and its predecessor. Their appointments were approved via separate regulatory documents.
Du Lingyan's appointment was approved on April 1, 2025. She reportedly previously served as General Manager of the Corporate Business Department at the former provincial credit union and as Party Committee Secretary of the Yibin Office, giving her deep experience in corporate business and local management.
Xia Haochun's appointment was approved on April 30, 2025. He has extensive experience in financial technology, having served as General Manager of the Information Technology Center at the former provincial credit union and later as General Manager of the Information Technology Department at the united bank. His expertise aligns with key tasks under the bank's operational model, such as core system integration and centralized data management.
Guo Jialian's appointment was approved on November 24, 2025. She rose through the ranks from a grassroots rural commercial bank, having served as Chairman of Luzhou Jiangyang Rural Commercial Bank and later as Party Committee Secretary of the Zigong Office and Director of the General Office at the former provincial credit union. She is familiar with the operations and management of county-level rural commercial banks and possesses comprehensive coordination experience at the provincial level.
With Liu Junyu's addition, the backgrounds of the four new deputy governors form a pattern of "three internal and one external" appointments: three promoted from within the former provincial credit union system, and one transferred from Sichuan Bank, another institution within the provincial financial system. The industry source analyzed that this configuration maintains business continuity by retaining key personnel from the original rural credit system while also introducing executives with corporate governance and financial management experience, which may help balance business development with standardized management.
Sichuan Rural Commercial United Bank is currently the largest banking financial institution in Sichuan by asset size. As of the end of 2025, its total assets reached 2.6 trillion yuan, with total loans of 1.3 trillion yuan and total deposits of 2.2 trillion yuan, ranking first in the province's banking sector for all three metrics. Its outstanding agricultural loans amounted to 620.2 billion yuan, with 346.8 billion yuan in agricultural loans issued throughout 2025.
Greater challenges lie in institutional development and risk control during the deepening reform stage. Sichuan is the only province in China adopting a "province invests in city, city merges county" reform path, where the provincial united bank invests in city-level rural commercial banks, which then implement unified management of county-level institutions. Since April 2026, the Sichuan financial regulator has intensively approved restructuring plans for rural commercial banks in six cities, involving the integration of 27 county-level institutions. This marks the completion of unified corporate entity reforms at the city level across all 21 prefectures and cities in the province.
This model has no precedent in nationwide rural credit cooperative reforms. For instance, Zhejiang Province uses a "bottom-up" model where county-level institutions invest in the provincial united bank, without reciprocal provincial investment in county-level entities. The governance structures and control logic of the two models differ significantly.
The aforementioned source close to Sichuan's small and medium-sized bank reforms indicated that after completing the city-level unified corporate entity reforms, Sichuan Rural Commercial United Bank faces substantive challenges mainly in three areas: first, consolidated management capability—how to achieve real-time monitoring and early warning of risk indicators after incorporating 21 city-level rural commercial banks into unified reporting; second, capital replenishment mechanisms—significant differences in capital adequacy levels between city and county-level institutions necessitate the provincial platform establishing effective capital allocation and replenishment channels; third, balancing business efficiency—with the management chain lengthened, whether the loan approval speed and market responsiveness of grassroots branches will be impacted requires ongoing observation.
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