On October 30, a financial news flash reported that Agricultural Bank of China held its third-quarter 2026 results briefing today. Wang Xiaoyong, general manager of the Asset and Liability Management Department, said that in the first three quarters, Agricultural Bank of China's net interest margin was 1.28%, flat compared with the first half, continuing the stable performance seen since the first half and providing strong support for the bank's overall business performance to improve while maintaining stability.
Since the start of this year, China's economy has continued to develop toward new growth drivers, improved quality, and positive momentum, and the proactive fiscal policy and moderately loose monetary policy have continued to work in coordination, creating favorable conditions for development. Agricultural Bank of China has aligned itself with the requirements of the national macroeconomic strategy and the transformation and upgrading of the economic structure, proactively adapted to changes in the situation, and worked to promote continued improvement in net interest margin changes, achieving an overall balance among volume, price, risk, and efficiency.
Specifically, on the asset side, around the goals of stabilizing total volume, optimizing structure, and improving quality and efficiency, the bank coordinated the dynamic balance between serving the real economy and its own sustainable development. First, based on serving the overall national interest, it continued to increase efforts to serve the real economy. In line with the requirements of the national macroeconomic strategy, it actively responded to fiscal and financial coordination policies to promote domestic demand, deepened its presence in county areas and key areas of the real economy, and achieved reasonable growth in total assets. Second, in response to the transformation and upgrading of the economic structure, it proactively optimized the structure of asset business. It actively aligned with the transformation and upgrading of the economic structure, continued to optimize the allocation of financial resources, focused on the five major financial articles, and increased credit extension to key areas such as technological innovation, green transformation, and consumption upgrading, with the extension structure continuing to improve. It proactively adapted to changes in the financial structure, coordinated the total amount, structure, and pace of financial investment, increased the proportion of high-yield assets, and continuously released the benefits of asset allocation. Third, it adhered to the principle of risk-based pricing, and the effect of coordinated volume and price continued to be released. On the basis of adhering to the principle of risk-based pricing, it increased differentiated management of loans, focused on improving the precision and effectiveness of pricing management, worked to raise marginal returns on assets, and kept interest rates on newly issued loans at a comparatively advantageous level among peers.
On the liability side, it adhered to consolidating advantages, strengthening the foundation, and controlling costs, providing strong support for the improvement in net interest margin changes. First, it maintained its advantage in growth of average daily deposit scale, and the dividend from deposit repricing continued to be released. Agricultural Bank of China continued to leverage its resource endowments spanning urban and rural areas, always treating deposit business as its most important source of funds, maintained a leading advantage in average daily deposit increments, especially personal deposits, and continued to release the dividend from repricing of maturing existing deposits. Second, it advanced customer and deposit foundation building, consolidating the basis for deposit growth. It continuously strengthened the customer service system, deepened the tiered and categorized customer management system, leveraged its service advantages in agriculture, rural areas, and county regions, and continued to advance customer and deposit foundation building, laying a solid foundation for retaining maturing time deposits and accumulating more low-cost stable funds. Third, it coordinated the reasonable development of active liabilities in terms of volume and price, promoting continued improvement in liability costs. It coordinated the organization of all funding sources, optimized the active liability management mechanism, actively promoted the transformation and quality improvement of interbank deposits, and drove continued improvement in liability costs.
On this basis, as the quality and efficiency of the bank's asset and liability business development continue to improve, we are confident in consolidating the trend of continued improvement in net interest margin, and we expect the full-year net interest margin level to continue to remain broadly stable.
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