China Merchants Bank (600036.SH/03968.HK) released its 2025 annual report on March 27. Despite challenges such as insufficient household credit demand, narrowing interest margins, and intensified competition, the bank maintained steady progress and a favorable development trend. Full-year operating revenue reached 337.532 billion yuan, while net profit attributable to the bank's shareholders was 150.181 billion yuan, both achieving positive year-on-year growth.
In 2025, the bank's net interest income turned positive, the growth rate of net fee income shifted into positive territory, and revenue from its comprehensive wealth management business achieved double-digit growth. Revenue growth improved quarter by quarter, while net profit growth also showed a positive quarterly trend. The non-performing loan ratio declined, reflecting the bank's strong operational resilience and development vitality.
Key operating indicators remained stable with positive trends. More households and corporations chose and trusted China Merchants Bank. Compared to the end of 2024, the number of retail customers served increased by 6.67% to 224 million, and corporate customers grew by 14.40% to 3.6225 million. Customer growth drove business expansion: by the end of 2025, total assets under management (AUM) for retail clients exceeded 17 trillion yuan, with an annual increase of over 2 trillion yuan, setting a new record. The total financing amount for corporate clients (FPA) rose by 11.08% to 6.7 trillion yuan. Total assets exceeded 13 trillion yuan, while total customer deposits approached 10 trillion yuan.
Full-year revenue grew steadily, supported by a narrowed year-on-year decline in net interest margin and moderate growth in interest-earning assets. Net interest income reached 215.593 billion yuan, up 2.04% year-on-year. The bank maintained a high proportion of non-interest income, which accounted for 36.13% of total revenue, above the industry average of 22.53% disclosed by regulators. Net fee and commission income increased by 4.39% to 75.258 billion yuan, while revenue from comprehensive wealth management rose 16.91% to 44.013 billion yuan.
Asset quality remained stable. The non-performing loan ratio stood at 0.94% at year-end, down 1 basis point from the previous year, remaining below 1% for multiple years. The provision coverage ratio was 391.79%, significantly higher than the industry average of 205%. Supported by these solid fundamentals, the bank's profitability led the industry, with ROAA and ROAE at 1.19% and 13.44%, respectively, both above industry averages.
Capital strength continued to improve. The bank ranked 8th globally by tier-1 capital among the top 1,000 banks, up two places from 2024. The total capital adequacy ratio was 18.24% at year-end, maintaining a leading position in the industry. The bank continued its high dividend payout policy, with planned cash dividends (including interim dividends) for 2025 totaling 50.843 billion yuan. The cash dividend payout ratio has remained above 35% since 2023, placing the bank in the top tier of the banking sector.
Revenue growth showed a quarterly recovery. In recent years, the banking industry faced increasing operational pressures, and China Merchants Bank was no exception. In the first quarter of 2025, both revenue and net profit saw slight declines. Despite a challenging start, the bank adjusted its strategies and maintained steady operations, leading to improving revenue growth rates each quarter: year-on-year growth rates for Q1, H1, the first three quarters, and the full year were -3.1%, -1.7%, -0.5%, and 0.01%, respectively. Full-year growth turned positive for the first time since 2023, highlighting the bank's operational resilience.
Profitability indicators also improved from mid-2025, with profit growth turning positive. Profit growth expanded further in the second half of the year, resulting in a full-year net profit attributable to shareholders increase of 1.21%. The return to positive revenue growth was supported by a narrowed decline in net interest margin and growth in fee income. Amid persistent interest rate declines, the bank strengthened its asset-liability management, achieving a net interest margin of 1.87%, significantly better than the industry average of 1.42%. The decline in net interest margin narrowed noticeably compared to the same period. In the fourth quarter alone, the net interest margin saw a marginal recovery, rising by 3 basis points quarter-on-quarter. The annualized average cost rate of interest-bearing liabilities fell by 9 basis points quarter-on-quarter, indicating that the advantage of low-cost liabilities was a key factor in the improved marginal performance of the net interest margin.
Net fee and commission income also performed strongly, with growth turning positive for the first time since 2022. Fee income from asset management business reached 11.927 billion yuan, up 10.94% year-on-year, while custody business commission income grew 9.90% to 5.375 billion yuan.
AI applications were implemented in nearly 900 scenarios. In 2025, artificial intelligence remained a hot topic, with Chinese companies leading global downloads of open-source large models. The adoption rate of AI technologies in large manufacturing enterprises exceeded 30%, and AI-powered devices like smart glasses and AI phones gradually entered daily life. How commercial banks respond to the opportunities and challenges of AI can be observed through China Merchants Bank's practices.
The annual report shows that the bank allocated 4.31% of its operating revenue, over 12.9 billion yuan, to information technology, maintaining high-intensity investment in technology. In 2025, the bank adopted an "AI First" philosophy, fostering a consensus on digital and intelligent transformation across the organization. It not only conducted comprehensive AI training for all employees but also became the only domestic banking institution serving as a maintainer for two major open-source projects, keeping pace with AI development trends.
In AI capability building, the bank accelerated both infrastructure development and scenario applications. At the infrastructure level, it established intelligent computing facilities, with daily token throughput increasing 10.1 times compared to 2024, and deployed 183 specialized domain models. At the application level, the bank implemented AI in 856 scenarios across retail finance, wholesale finance, risk control, operations, and office management.
The report indicates that the bank internally incubated a series of intelligent assistants, empowering employees, including relationship managers, in customer management, business analysis, and wealth investment research. In the R&D domain, it deepened the application of the large model-assisted programming product "Coding Assistant DevAgent," evolving from a Copilot model to an Agent model. Coverage among developers exceeded 97%, effectively enhancing coding efficiency.
These underlying capabilities ultimately translated into superior intelligent customer service experiences. Currently, the monthly active users (MAU) of the China Merchants Bank App and the Palm Life App reached 129 million, while wholesale online channels served 2.2085 million monthly active corporate clients.
The bank's AI achievements gained industry recognition. Public information shows that in early 2026, at the 2025 Shenzhen Financial Innovation Competition jointly organized by the Shenzhen Local Financial Administration and the People's Bank of China Shenzhen Branch, among other departments, China Merchants Bank won first prize for its systematic innovation in integrating full-stack large model technology with financial business, demonstrating its leading strength in the digital and intelligent transformation of the financial industry.
Where are the growth drivers for China Merchants Bank? In recent years, the low-interest-rate cycle posed significant challenges to the banking industry. Public data indicates that joint-stock banks experienced negative revenue growth for two consecutive years in 2023 and 2024, with growth rates of -3.71% and -1.25%, respectively. Exploring new growth drivers and navigating the low-interest-rate cycle have become common transformation tasks for Chinese banks.
As a leading joint-stock bank, China Merchants Bank's strategic moves are closely watched by the market and the industry. An analysis of the annual report reveals three emerging growth drivers.
First, the integrated business growth driver. Drawing from international banking experience, this is likely the most important source of future revenue growth for Chinese banks. China Merchants Bank has an early and deep presence in this area, with continuously deepening integrated operations. Subsidiaries such as CMB Wing Lung Bank, CMB International, CMB Financial Leasing, CMB Wealth Management, and China Merchants Fund all showed positive development momentum, becoming key contributors to the group's growth. Additionally, the bank actively expanded its integrated business boundaries, with CMB Investments commencing operations in 2025. By year-end, the total assets of the bank's eight major subsidiaries exceeded 950 billion yuan, up 11.43% from the previous year, accounting for 12.26% of the group's revenue, an increase of 1.97 percentage points year-on-year.
Second, the key regional growth driver. According to the annual report, the bank focused on the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Chengdu-Chongqing, and West Coast regions as key development areas. The growth rates of customer base, AUM, core deposits, and corporate loans in these 16 regional branches exceeded the average of domestic branches. The contribution of key regional branches is gradually increasing and is expected to become a major growth engine.
Third, the growth driver from dominant niche businesses. The bank capitalized on market trends and actively responded to customer needs. The number of retail wealth product holders reached 64.1225 million, up 10.15% from the previous year. Loan growth in key sectors such as technology, green finance, inclusive finance, and manufacturing significantly outpaced the bank's average loan growth.
As stated by Wang Liang, President of China Merchants Bank, "Running a bank is like a marathon, not a sprint. You cannot run a marathon at sprint speed; otherwise, it is unsustainable." A long-term perspective may be the core strategy for the bank to explore new growth drivers during the low-interest-rate cycle.
In summary, amid a complex and challenging environment in 2025, China Merchants Bank demonstrated effective strategic transformation, stable operational performance, and continuously enhanced core competitiveness. With the ongoing implementation of strategic initiatives, the bank is well-positioned to further unlock its development potential, create new growth drivers, and successfully navigate the low-interest-rate cycle.
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