The "16th Five-Year Plan" period is expected to witness a new round of peak competition between the two super-large banks that have first surpassed the 50 trillion yuan threshold.
At the start of the "16th Five-Year Plan," Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) maintained its strong momentum. The latest disclosed first-quarter report for 2026 shows that ABC's total assets historically exceeded 50 trillion yuan, with a net profit growth rate of 4.8% leading the state-owned large banks, and the scale gap with Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) continued to narrow.
In the highly competitive Chinese banking industry, no commercial bank can alter the existing landscape overnight. Among the large banks, ABC was listed the latest and carried the heaviest historical burdens. After a long period of accumulation and preparation, it accelerated during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, achieving leapfrog development in core dimensions such as scale expansion, profit growth, asset quality, and capital market performance, quietly completing a transformation.
Particularly in September 2025, ABC's total market capitalization of A-shares and H-shares surpassed that of ICBC for the first time, marking a symbolic event in the restructuring of the state-owned large bank landscape.
Why ABC? Different perspectives yield different answers. However, a crucial underlying logic is that ABC's business structure and resource endowment align more closely with the national strategic direction of the new era. From the "14th Five-Year Plan" to the "16th Five-Year Plan," promoting comprehensive rural revitalization and coordinated regional development have consistently been focal points for building a new development pattern, areas requiring significant resource allocation. Consequently, ABC has been entrusted with greater contemporary missions, and its differentiated competitive advantages have become increasingly prominent.
In this sense, ABC's transformation and the new landscape of large banks can be seen as a footnote to this historical trend.
**Sustained Effort: ABC's Changes During the "14th Five-Year Plan" Period**
Facing multiple challenges such as narrowing industry interest margins, insufficient effective demand, and rising credit risks, ABC made continuous efforts during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, achieving historic breakthroughs.
The competitive landscape among the Big Four banks was gradually reshaped. ABC rose from third to second place in terms of scale and took the lead in an increasing number of core indicators, becoming the bank with the strongest growth and resilience among the Big Four.
In terms of scale, the "14th Five-Year Plan" was a period of leapfrog growth for ABC. The increments of its three core scale indicators—assets, loans, and deposits—all ranked first among the Big Four. At the end of 2020, ABC's total assets were 27.21 trillion yuan, ranking third among the Big Four. By the end of 2025, its total assets reached 48.78 trillion yuan, surpassing China Construction Bank (CCB) to become second in the industry. During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, cumulative new assets amounted to 21.57 trillion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.38%, leading the Big Four. In the first quarter of 2026, ABC's total assets exceeded 51.02 trillion yuan, maintaining a leading growth rate of 4.6%, and the scale gap with ICBC narrowed to 4.75 trillion yuan.
In the first quarter, ABC's total loans and financial investments exceeded 45 trillion yuan, accounting for 10% of China's outstanding social financing scale (456.46 trillion yuan) at the end of March, indirectly confirming the change in ABC's market position and its commitment to serving the real economy.
In terms of profitability, during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period when the overall profit growth of the banking industry slowed, ABC, benefiting from its differentiated business structure, achieved sustained relatively fast profit growth, with both profit quality and per capita efficiency ranking first among the Big Four. In 2025, ABC's net profit was 292 billion yuan. During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, cumulative new profits amounted to 75.6 billion yuan, with a CAGR of 6.18%, ranking first among the Big Four. Its net profit growth rate led comparable peers for five consecutive years. In the first quarter of 2026, ABC's net profit increased by 4.8% year-on-year, maintaining its leading position.
Regarding profit quality, in 2025, ABC's weighted average return on equity (ROE) reached 10.16%, ranking first among the Big Four and staying above 10% for five consecutive years. Its net profit per capita was 637,800 yuan, with its growth rate also ranking first among the Big Four.
In terms of asset quality, an earlier market stereotype was that "county-level agriculture-related businesses equal high risk," but official data from the "14th Five-Year Plan" period overturned this perception. ABC not only continuously optimized its asset quality but also became the bank with the strongest risk resilience among the Big Four. At the end of 2020, ABC's non-performing loan (NPL) ratio was 1.57%, ranking third among the Big Four. By the end of 2025, it decreased to 1.27%, a cumulative drop of 30 basis points, the largest decline among the Big Four. Among these, the NPL ratio for county-area loans was only 1.13%, down 39 basis points from the end of 2020, significantly lower than the bank-wide average.
The overdue loan ratio, which better reflects the authenticity of asset quality, was 1.25% at the end of 2025 for ABC. It was the only bank among the Big Four with an overdue loan ratio lower than its NPL ratio, down 5 basis points from the end of 2020. It was also the only bank among comparable peers whose overdue loan ratio decreased during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period.
Regarding the loan loss provision coverage ratio, at the end of 2025, ABC's loan loss provision balance reached 1,004.8 billion yuan, an increase of over 370 billion yuan during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period—the largest increment among peers and the only bank among the Big Four with a provision balance exceeding one trillion yuan. Its provision coverage ratio was 292.55%, the highest among the Big Four for five consecutive years, nearly 80 percentage points higher than ICBC's 213.60%, indicating a substantial risk buffer.
In the capital market, during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, ABC's total market capitalization grew from 1.08 trillion yuan to 2.61 trillion yuan, a cumulative increase of 143%, significantly outperforming the other three major banks. In terms of valuation, ABC's A-share price-to-book ratio (PB) recovered from 0.60 times at the end of 2020 to 1.00 times at the end of 2025, making it the only bank among the Big Four to achieve a recovery from below book value. Its price-to-earnings ratio (PE) rose from 5.59 times to 9.31 times, also ranking first among the Big Four.
**Underlying Logic: Differentiated Competitive Advantages Across Cycles**
ABC's comprehensive rise since the "14th Five-Year Plan" period is by no means accidental but the result of seizing opportunities of the times and building differentiated competitive advantages.
Serving rural revitalization is ABC's primary responsibility and core business, as well as its strategic focus. Through 22,800 physical county-level outlets and hundreds of thousands of Hui Nong Tong service points, ABC has built a "capillary-level" service network covering townships and administrative villages, making it the absolute leader in the county-level financial market. Against the backdrop of promoting comprehensive rural revitalization and coordinated regional development, ABC's business structure highly aligns with national strategy. The endowment accumulated over 70 years of deep cultivation in county areas makes it an important vehicle for leveraging national strategic dividends, constituting ABC's unique competitive advantage in the new era.
In contrast, the traditional positioning of ICBC, CCB, and Bank of China (BOC) focuses more on the urban economy, infrastructure, and internationalization. Their policy alignment and channel coverage depth in the rural revitalization strategy are not as strong as ABC's. During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, ABC's county-area loans doubled, exceeding 10 trillion yuan by the end of 2025.
Furthermore, given that the urban market has become a red ocean, ABC's leading advantage in county and rural areas also lays the foundation for the sustained growth of its retail business. In the first quarter of this year, ABC's total number of individual customers exceeded 900 million, maintaining the top position among peers. The balance of assets under management (AUM) for individual customers surpassed the 25 trillion yuan mark (25.8 trillion yuan), with an increment of 1.1 trillion yuan, ranking first among comparable peers. The number of monthly active mobile banking customers exceeded 285 million, leading peers for 61 consecutive months.
Beyond institutional dividends and favorable timing, building ABC's differentiated competitive advantages requires implementation through its own operational capabilities. Since the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, ABC has systematically restructured its operational system around national strategy, building core barriers difficult for peers to breach on the liability side, asset side, and risk control side, forming an operational moat adapted to the characteristics of China's county-level economy.
On the liability side, county-area deposits have built a solid low-cost advantage. In 2025, the interest payment rate for ABC's county-area deposits was only 1.28%, significantly lower than the bank-wide average and also lower than the overall deposit interest payment rates of ICBC and CCB, supporting its strong profit resilience during the cycle of narrowing interest margins.
On the asset side, it has completed the restructuring of a low-risk asset structure adapted to national strategy. Currently, ABC's county-area loans are primarily directed towards assets with fiscal or core enterprise backing, such as grain security, high-standard farmland construction, leading agricultural industrialization enterprises, and county-level infrastructure. These assets feature low risk and stable returns, possessing significant counter-cyclical attributes.
On the risk control side, it has built a proprietary risk control system adapted to the county-level ecosystem. ABC is the only institution among the state-owned large banks with an independent Agriculture, Rural Areas, and Farmers (ARAF) financial division, possessing separate credit approval, risk control models, and assessment incentive mechanisms. Relying on a grid-based offline layout, it has solved the problem of information asymmetry in county-level finance. Its "scissor gap" between overdue loans and non-performing loans has remained negative for multiple consecutive quarters, leading peers in the authenticity of asset quality.
In the first quarter, ABC's county-level financial supply continued to strengthen. The balance of county-area loans reached 11.8 trillion yuan, with a new increase of 836.5 billion yuan and a growth rate of 7.65%, 2.68 percentage points higher than the bank-wide average. The balance accounted for 41.92% of domestic loans, a further increase.
**The March of Time: A New, More Dynamic Landscape for Large Banks**
New development patterns often give rise to new financial landscapes. Various data indicate that the era of ICBC's comprehensive leadership as the "universal bank" has passed. However, ICBC's balance and stability should not be underestimated. Its long-term position as the world's largest bank is also supported by solid moats.
In the short term, the scale gap between ABC and ICBC will continue to narrow, and ABC is expected to catch up or even surpass ICBC in more core operational indicators. However, achieving comprehensive superiority over ICBC is not easy.
ICBC has its advantages. Its total assets still lead ABC by nearly 5 trillion yuan, and its annual net profit leads by nearly 80 billion yuan. The gap in base size requires ABC to spend more time catching up. Meanwhile, ABC still needs to intensify its efforts to catch up in areas where ICBC has strong barriers, such as corporate financial services, comprehensive operations, and cross-border finance.
ABC has opportunities. For a long time to come, China's economic growth engine will further shift towards dual-wheel drive from urban-rural integration. County and rural areas will release more robust financial demand. As the leader in county-level finance, ABC's differentiated competitive advantages will continue to be prominent, and its development space and growth speed remain promising.
It can be anticipated that during the "16th Five-Year Plan" period, these two super-large banks that first surpassed the 50 trillion yuan level will engage in a new round of peak competition. Meanwhile, CCB, which closely follows in comprehensive strength, and BOC, with its increasingly mature international operations, could potentially challenge the existing rankings. A new, more dynamic landscape for large banks has already formed.
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