China Merchants Bank's New President Wang Xiaoqing Approved for Office, Previously Stated Aim to "Seek Resilience Amid Adverse Revenue Cycles"

On July 28, the regulatory approval for Wang Xiaoqing's appointment as President of China Merchants Bank was officially granted. With this, the smooth transition of management at this commercial bank, with assets exceeding RMB 13 trillion, has substantially taken effect.

Wang Xiaoqing takes over a balance sheet regarded by outsiders as having fortress-like characteristics: in the first quarter of this year, China Merchants Bank achieved operating revenue of RMB 86.94 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3.81%; net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company was RMB 37.852 billion, a year-on-year increase of 1.52%, with overall operations maintaining a stable trend.

At the previous 2025 Annual General Meeting, Wang Xiaoqing had already led the new management team in addressing the public.

Wang Xiaoqing pointed out that the challenges currently facing China Merchants Bank include both industry-wide commonalities and its own structural characteristics. This is mainly reflected in the high proportion of demand deposits, which limits the room for reducing liability costs, and the high proportion of retail credit assets, which brings cyclical fluctuations. These factors have caused China Merchants Bank's performance to align with the general industry trend, although there are differences in minor cycles.

In response to the aforementioned environment, China Merchants Bank's strategy is to maintain strategic focus and concretize the "15th Five-Year Plan."

At the operational level, Wang Xiaoqing proposed four adherences: being customer-centric, prioritizing asset quality, consolidating the dominant position in retail banking, and continuously strengthening investment in technology.

It should be noted that in promoting technological empowerment, China Merchants Bank focuses on driving business innovation through technology. Based on the underlying operational logic of commercial banks, its technology route does not reject all technical outsourcing or seek to transform into a pure technology enterprise. Instead, it aims to improve overall service quality and efficiency through pragmatic internal and external collaboration.

Regarding specific business growth areas, China Merchants Bank has identified five directions: tapping into the existing customer base, wealth management, services for technology enterprises, branches in key regions, and the application of new technologies.

Wealth management remains China Merchants Bank's ballast stone. Wang Xiaoqing revealed that China Merchants Bank has 227 million individual customers and nearly 3.8 million corporate customers.

For the massive mass and high-net-worth customer groups covering all age groups and social circles, China Merchants Bank has not completely copied the internet platform approach of purely pursuing traffic. Instead, it has established a cyclical system that includes understanding customers, providing allocation plans, recommending high-quality products, dynamic monitoring, and plan optimization.

Through this mechanism, China Merchants Bank is committed to asset allocation based on customers' true risk preferences and strengthening synergy with industries such as securities to broaden the dimensions of information access for investors.

In terms of asset allocation on the funding side, the planning for bond and equity investments is also a focus of market attention.

Currently, China Merchants Bank's bond investments account for approximately 32% of total assets. Management believes that maintaining this ratio is reasonable in a low-interest-rate environment. However, in terms of operational strategy, more effort will be devoted to capturing trading opportunities in the future, while remaining prudent about realizing floating profits accumulated earlier, to avoid overdrawing future interest income due to short-term performance demands.

Regarding equity investment, China Merchants Bank relies on its affiliated investment institutions for layout, arranging a budget of over RMB 10 billion for the year, mainly focusing on the field of new quality productive forces. Management emphasized that related investments will follow the principles of major asset allocation, relying on rigorous internal and external investment research capabilities to proceed prudently, without blindly chasing concepts, and keeping the overall scale stable.

Proceeding in sync with operational strategies is China Merchants Bank's normalized attention to market capitalization management.

Since the beginning of this year, the stock price of China Merchants Bank has experienced a certain degree of correction. In response, China Merchants Bank has established a specialized market capitalization management team, led by Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Peng Jiawen.

In terms of specific measures, constrained by the regulatory thresholds for stock buybacks in the banking industry, China Merchants Bank currently places more emphasis on returning value to shareholders through cash dividends. In recent years, its dividend payout ratio has risen to around 35%.

Wang Xiaoqing's expectation for China Merchants Bank is: to be more resilient in adverse revenue cycles, and more elastic in favorable cycles.

With the formal approval of his qualifications, the market is continuously observing how this helmsman, with financial experience across multiple fields, will deliver on this operational goal in a challenging market environment.

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