Effective January 1st this year, the "Provisions on the Administration of Sales Charges for Publicly Offered Securities Investment Funds" (hereinafter referred to as the "Provisions") were officially implemented, marking the full and final implementation of a fee structure reform in the public fund industry that has been over two years in the making.
These "Provisions" have garnered significant market attention, prompting leading institutions such as ICBC, Bank of China, Bank of Communications, and Fullgoal Fund to actively voice their support. These institutions stated that the public fund fee reform will help steadily reduce investor costs, enhance the sense of gain for investors, and further drive industry transformation and high-quality development.
ICBC: Actively Implementing Public Fund Sales Fee Reform to Tangibly Enhance Investor Sense of Gain Public fund sales fee reform is a key initiative in practicing the people-centered nature of financial work, with its core focus on enhancing investor satisfaction and sense of gain, and promoting a deep industry transformation from a "seller's market" model to a "buyer's service" model. This reform is not merely about reducing explicit fees; it is about fostering an industry development ecosystem that is more aligned with investor interests. As a major state-owned commercial bank, ICBC consistently prioritizes safeguarding the fundamental interests of the broadest base of financial consumers, viewing this as a crucial opportunity to transform its wealth management business and enhance its core competitiveness.
The core objective of the fee reform is to enhance the investor's sense of gain. ICBC will seize this opportunity to comprehensively upgrade its customer service philosophy and capabilities: precise interpretation and transparent communication. Through various channels including the ICBC mobile banking app, online banking, branch electronic screens, and one-on-one communication with relationship managers, the bank will fully explain the content of the fee reform policy to investors, avoiding information asymmetry and safeguarding investors' right to know. Strengthening investor education and companionship. Centered on the concepts of "long-term investment, value investment, and rational investment," the bank will create easy-to-understand educational materials and host online and offline seminars. It will guide investors to focus on the actual changes in investment costs after the fee reductions, understand the matching relationship between investment risk and return, and avoid making irrational decisions solely based on lower fees. Companion services during periods of market volatility will be enhanced, providing professional and objective advice. Optimizing the service experience. ICBC will continuously improve the usability of its fund channels, the friendliness of information display, and the responsiveness and professionalism of advisory services. It will fully leverage financial technology to provide customers with more precise asset diagnostics, portfolio analysis, and personalized services. Enhancing training and dissemination. The bank will organize specialized training for its fund sales staff, customer service personnel, and operational support staff across the entire bank to ensure frontline personnel can accurately and clearly communicate policy changes to investors.
The fee reform imposes higher demands on ICBC's fund sales business model and also points the way for its transformation. Guided by the goal of improving customer profitability experience, ICBC will strengthen its professional expertise, continuously optimize and build a scientific and rigorous fund evaluation and selection system, screen for truly high-quality fund managers and products across the entire market for investors, enhance asset allocation capabilities, and provide diversified, personalized fund investment portfolio recommendations based on customers' risk tolerance and life-cycle needs.
Bank of China: Diligently Implementing Regulatory Requirements to Ensure Smooth Landing of Public Fund Fee Reform The new version of the "Provisions" represents an important step in implementing the deployment of the new "National Nine Articles," deepening the reform of the public fund industry, and promoting high-quality development. It is also a powerful measure to reduce investor costs and enhance their sense of gain, signaling the basic completion of the industry's fee reform work.
The new "Provisions" are detailed and well-considered, having reduced the levels of subscription fees and sales service fees, while also providing more detailed regulations on matters such as the attribution of redemption fees and their lower limits, the归属 of sales settlement fund interest, and fair competition within the industry. This is conducive to the public fund industry conducting business with investor interests at its core, encouraging institutions within the industry to build a development ecosystem with incentives compatible with those of investors, improving investor services, and practicing the people-centered nature of financial work.
As a major state-owned bank, Bank of China has always adhered to the principle of finance serving the people and continuously promoted the high-quality development of its fund sales business. Firstly, it focuses on benefiting investors, having long implemented various fee discounts such as a 10% discount on subscriptions for fixed-income and "fixed-income+" products across all channels, and a 60% discount on subscriptions for all products via mobile banking. Secondly, it emphasizes the construction of a service system; externally, it provides professional information and digital services to customers through mobile banking functions and its wealth management ecosystem, while internally, it builds a training system for its fund sales team to continuously improve service quality. Thirdly, it prioritizes development quality, increasing efforts to promote products with holding periods to guide customers towards long-term investment.
Bank of China will take this opportunity to diligently implement regulatory requirements and ensure the smooth landing of the fee reform. Simultaneously, it will focus on areas including partner institution management, product selection, channel services, and risk prevention to accelerate the optimization of a full lifecycle service system for public fund customers, further driving the industry towards accelerated high-quality development.
Bank of Communications: Helps Steadily Reduce Investor Costs and Enhance Investor Sense of Gain On December 31, 2025, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) revised and formally released the "Provisions," proposing reasonable reductions in public fund subscription fees and sales service fee levels, among other measures. The public fund fee reform helps steadily reduce investor investment costs, enhance the sense of gain for investors, and further promote industry transformation and high-quality development.
First, the new rules tangibly reduce investor costs, reflecting the original intention of finance serving the people. The head of the Wealth Management Department at Bank of Communications headquarters stated: "Through measures like fee reductions and optimizing the fee structure, the new rules tangibly lower investor costs and clarify fee attribution, directly addressing investor concerns and helping to further enhance market trust and health." As early as 2016, Bank of Communications took the lead among commercial banks in launching a fund subscription fee discount campaign on its mobile banking channel, leading the way in practically benefiting fund investors. In 2026, it will continue to persist in carrying out the "Fund Subscription and Regular Investment Handling Fee Discount Activity," which has already been announced on its official website.
Second, the new rules effectively promote the wealth management business in practicing the "customer-centric" philosophy. The head of the Wealth Management Department believes that clauses in the new rules, such as "waiving sales service fees for shares held for over one year" and "allocating redemption fees in full to the fund's assets," clearly convey a policy orientation encouraging long-term holding, which is highly consistent with the inherent requirement for bank wealth management businesses to transform from "product sales" to "allocation services." For commercial banks, this will accelerate the shift away from the old model reliant on "transaction fee" income, promoting the enhancement of professional service capabilities such as asset allocation and investment companionship, and deeply practicing the "customer-centric" business philosophy.
Bank of Communications recently established a Wealth Management Department at the headquarters level, further strengthening its wealth finance specialty. The bank believes that wealth management is an important way to increase residents' property income and a key link in boosting consumption. By optimizing and strengthening its wealth management business to help residents increase property income, it is implementing the decisions and deployments of the Party Central Committee, which is also the common mission of financial institutions, particularly asset management and wealth management institutions.
Third, Bank of Communications is currently conducting the "Worth Wealth Journey" activity, intensifying efforts in investor education and financial literacy publicity, and adhering to the original intention of finance serving the people. The responsible person introduced that the recently launched "Worth Wealth Journey" activity, as the first major marketing initiative following the establishment of the Wealth Management Department at headquarters, aims to fulfill the responsibility of a major state-owned bank, gather forces from all sides to jointly provide better wealth management services for customers, and conduct financial education and publicity for investors.
Fullgoal Fund: Putting Investors First, Building a New High-Quality Development Ecosystem Fullgoal Fund stated that the "Provisions" are a key move in deeply implementing the new "National Nine Articles" and promoting the industry's transformation towards high-quality development. They profoundly practice the core concept of "putting investors first" through six core arrangements: reducing subscription fees and sales service fees, optimizing redemption arrangements, encouraging long-term holding, adhering to the development orientation of equity funds, standardizing sales charges, and establishing a direct sales service platform for institutional investors. These measures practically benefit investors, guide long-term investment, and will inject strong momentum into the healthy, sustainable development of the industry and the enhancement of capital market vitality.
Specifically, this sales fee reform is惠民 (benefiting the people) in every move, targeting the core of the sales process. Four quantifiable and perceptible core measures clearly demonstrate the determination and sincerity of the reform. In terms of fee benefits, reasonable reductions have been achieved for various products' subscription fees and sales service fees, with the overall industry sales cost reduction reaching 34%, estimated to save investors approximately 30 billion yuan annually. At the mechanism "optimization" level, it completely reverses the old logic of "emphasizing new fund launches over ongoing fund operations." In terms of development orientation, the "Provisions" clearly guide industry resources towards two key areas: on one hand, maintaining the cap that customer maintenance fees generated from sales to individual investors shall not exceed 50% of management fees, incentivizing sales institutions to improve service experience and the sense of gain for individual investors; on the other hand, through differentiated arrangements for sales of stock-based, hybrid funds, and other funds to non-individual investors, it pushes the industry to focus on enhancing the competitiveness of equity funds, solidifying the core of wealth management.
Furthermore, the newly established industry direct sales service platform (FISP) reduces costs, increases efficiency, and controls risks for fund managers' direct sales businesses, opening up new space for the industry to enhance professional service capabilities and optimize customer experience.
It is worth noting that compared to the previous draft for comments, the "Provisions" have optimized and improved numerous clauses, aiming to practically plug loopholes, fill gaps, and enhance efficiency, fully maintaining the healthy order of the public fund sales market. This reform places "protecting the legitimate rights and interests of fund shareholders" at the core of its institutional design, driving the industry to achieve three key transformations: a shift in orientation from "scale" to "return"; a change in philosophy to encourage "long-term" holding rather than "short-term" speculation; and a transformation of the industry ecosystem.
Reviewing the reform process, since the fee reform work was initiated in July 2023, the CSRC has promoted the reform in stages along the path of "fund managers - securities companies - sales institutions." The first two stages have achieved significant results, laying a solid foundation for the landing of the third stage of sales fee reform. According to statistics, the three stages cumulatively benefit investors by over 50 billion yuan annually. Fullgoal Fund believes that this deep-reaching fee reform is not just about "reducing fees," but more importantly about "optimizing mechanisms" and "reshaping the ecosystem."
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