Commercial banks are no longer limiting the establishment of Chief Compliance Officers to the head office level.
It has been exclusively learned that Ping An Bank Co.,Ltd. issued a batch of appointments on January 27, appointing the heads of eight branches to concurrently serve as Compliance Officers. Following Industrial Bank Co.,Ltd.'s appointment of seven branch heads to double as Compliance Officers, Ping An Bank has become another joint-stock bank to complete the deployment of Compliance Officers at the branch level.
Branch heads have begun to take on the additional role of Compliance Officer.
It was learned that on January 27, the day after concluding its 2026 annual work conference, Ping An Bank internally announced a series of appointments: the heads of its Chongqing, Kunming, Qingdao, Foshan, Urumqi, Shenyang, Harbin, and Xi'an branches were appointed to concurrently serve as branch Compliance Officers.
Similarly, recently, according to reports, Industrial Bank Co.,Ltd. appointed the heads of its Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Jinan branches to concurrently serve as branch Compliance Officers.
The "Measures for the Administration of Compliance in Financial Institutions" imposes a mandatory requirement for financial institution headquarters to establish a Chief Compliance Officer role, while the stipulation for provincial-level or primary branches is that they "should, in principle" establish a Compliance Officer position.
Industry insiders analyzed that the two banks' move to appoint branch heads as concurrent Compliance Officers can more proactively integrate the compliance management system into the entire business process, prevent a disconnect between compliance and frontline business operations, and enhance the efficiency of compliance and risk management. It is believed that these two banks are not the only ones; more banks will not only establish a Chief Compliance Officer at the head office level in accordance with the National Financial Regulatory Administration's "Measures for the Administration of Compliance in Financial Institutions" but will also establish Compliance Officer positions at the branch level.
At the head office level, Industrial Bank's Chief Compliance Officer is concurrently held by Vice President Sun Xiongpeng; Ping An Bank's Chief Compliance Officer is concurrently held by Assistant President and Chief Risk Officer Wu Leiming. However, both were only appointed as Chief Compliance Officers by their respective boards of directors in December 2025, and their qualifications for these positions are still pending approval from the National Financial Regulatory Administration.
Over 20 banks have already established the Chief Compliance Officer position.
Many banks are gradually completing the configuration of their Chief Compliance Officers before the end of the transition period (March 1, 2025 - March 1, 2026) stipulated by the "Measures for the Administration of Compliance in Financial Institutions."
In December 2025 alone, the boards of directors of six banks, including Jiangyin Bank, Ping An Bank, Industrial Bank, Bank of Nanjing, China Minsheng Bank, and Ruifeng Bank, passed resolutions to appoint Chief Compliance Officers, with the relevant qualifications still awaiting regulatory approval.
In addition to the aforementioned six banks, based on an incomplete review of public reports, over a dozen other banks announced the appointment of Chief Compliance Officers throughout 2025. These include Huaxia Bank, Bank of Jilin, Shixing Dazhong Village Bank, Harbin Bank, Inner Mongolia Rural Commercial Bank, Mizuho Bank (China), Hainan Rural Commercial Bank, Guangxi Beibu Gulf Bank, Jining Bank, Jilin Rural Commercial Bank, Longjiang Bank, UBS (China), Bank of Changshu, Zijin Bank, Bank of Ningbo, and Bank of Jiangsu.
In summary, among the more than 20 banks that have disclosed information, most Chief Compliance Officers are concurrently held by existing senior executives, with professional backgrounds primarily concentrated in roles such as President, Vice President, Chief Risk Officer, or Assistant President. In the process of establishing the Chief Compliance Officer position, the compliance system construction within China's banking industry is also considered to be shifting from "formal compliance" towards "substantive compliance."
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