Strategic Transformation Progress Bar 30% Remaining! Ping An Bank's 2026 "Return to Growth" Methodology Taking Shape

“2025 will be difficult, but it is a year to strengthen the foundation. Our goal for 2026 is to return to positive growth.” Ping An Bank Party Committee Secretary and President Ji Guangheng said at the bank’s 2025 annual performance release conference. Ji Guangheng stated that he personally believes the bank’s strategic transformation, launched in the second half of 2023, has already achieved over 70% progress.

“Look at the indicators statically, observe the trends dynamically”—based on statements from multiple management members, including but not limited to key retail business indicators bottoming out and rebounding, non-performing assets in corporate banking peaking and declining, net interest margin narrowing and stabilizing, all lay a solid foundation for Ping An Bank to return to profitability and positive growth in 2026.

“How to return to growth” has undoubtedly become the most frequently asked question throughout the conference. Summarizing the statements from the bank’s leadership, it is clear that in the remaining 30% of the transformation progress, some turning points are emerging, some strategies are taking shape, and some risk buffers are being built.

Retail turning point approaching, focus on five areas this year

“2025 is a very difficult year for Ping An Bank, but from the operational situation in the second half and especially in Q4, many reform effects are beginning to show,” Ji Guangheng said at the conference. He summarized several reform achievements, primarily noting that the bank’s retail credit scale stopped declining since the second half of last year, and retail asset quality has significantly improved.

Wang Jun, Assistant President in charge of retail banking, further detailed how these results were achieved. Wang said: “Through optimizing customer acquisition channels (enhancing our own channels), deepening customer segmentation, enriching product offerings, and increasing the proportion of high-quality business, retail operations are showing positive signs, and a turning point has gradually appeared.”

The basis for this judgment includes, but is not limited to, the following four aspects:

1. Retail loan scale has stabilized. By the end of 2025, Ping An Bank’s retail loan balance decreased by 2.3% year-on-year, narrowing the decline by 8.3 percentage points; from a quarter-on-quarter perspective, retail loans decreased by 41.2 billion yuan in the first half of 2025 but grew by 1.3 billion yuan in the second half, essentially stabilizing. In terms of product structure, credit card installment and revolving assets stabilized; mortgage and auto financing balances maintained positive growth; Orange e-loan and Orange business loan balances exceeded 30 billion yuan.

2. Retail asset quality continued to improve. By the end of 2025, the bank’s personal loan non-performing rate was 1.23%, down 0.16 percentage points from the previous year-end. Management emphasized that retail NPLs have declined for five consecutive quarters, with both NPL generation rate and NPL creation amount decreasing significantly over two years. This indicates that the bank’s retail NPLs have basically peaked and the trend is ongoing.

3. Asset structure optimization in banking and insurance. For the most important deposit business, Ping An Bank promoted high-quality deposit growth: in 2025, the average daily balance of personal deposits increased by 2.7% year-on-year, with personal demand deposits up 12.9%. While deposits steadily increased, the bank’s average interest rate on personal deposits decreased by 36 basis points. Meanwhile, wealth management income, represented by bancassurance commissions, continued to rise. In 2025, wealth management fee income reached 5.061 billion yuan, up 15.8% year-on-year; among which, income from agency personal insurance was 1.292 billion yuan, up 53.3%.

4. Retail revenue decline narrowed, and net profit showed a recovery trend. In 2025, Ping An Bank’s retail operating income decreased by 13.5% year-on-year, but the decline narrowed by 12.4 percentage points compared to 2024, indicating a slowdown in revenue decline. Meanwhile, with strengthened risk control, optimized customer structure, and reduced credit impairment losses, the bank’s retail net profit rebounded significantly from 289 million yuan at the end of 2024 to 2.683 billion yuan.

“Based on these four aspects, we believe the retail business has basically reached a turning point,” Wang Jun said. He also pointed out that in 2026, with loans returning to growth or high-quality development in wealth management, retail revenue and profits will further increase.

How to ensure retail business “recovery”? Wang Jun revealed the bank’s key focus areas for retail this year:

1. Customer management, actively integrating into Ping An Group’s ecosystem, using precise customer segmentation and differentiated product benefits to meet core needs such as wealth management and health protection;
2. Further optimizing the Pocket Bank app, emphasizing customer companionship services;
3. Rationally adjusting the loan structure, on the basis of core businesses, further releasing the capacity of mid-yield asset businesses, and expanding consumer loans;
4. In large wealth management, adhering to high-quality AUM growth as the main goal, continuously optimizing client allocation capabilities;
5. Strengthening team building, continuously cultivating customer acquisition, retention, and enhancement capabilities.

Public banking continues to support and strengthen amid no internal competition

During these two years of deep transformation, where retail business has been actively reducing high-risk assets and adjusting credit issuance pace, Ping An Bank’s corporate banking has taken on the main role of loan growth. “Supporting retail growth” has become a frequently used phrase in recent conferences.

This conference was no exception. By the end of 2025, the bank’s total loans and advances amounted to about 3.39 trillion yuan, an increase of 0.5% from the previous year. As mentioned earlier, retail loans decreased by 2.3% YoY, meaning that in 2025, like 2024, the bank’s loan expansion mainly relied on corporate banking. The financial report shows that corporate loans reached 1.6635 trillion yuan, up 3.5% from the end of last year, accounting for 49.1%.

According to Vice President Fang Wehao, who oversees corporate banking, last year, general corporate loans grew by 9.2%, with low-yield bills reduced by about 130 billion yuan. On the liability side, through expanding and optimizing low-cost funding sources, the bank’s average corporate deposit interest rate dropped sharply from 2.01% to 1.55%, providing a safety cushion for interest margin stabilization. “Overall, we see some progress in this stage,” Fang Wehao commented on corporate banking.

One reason for his restrained wording may be that, although Ping An Bank’s corporate business has achieved “volume” growth and “price” optimization, there is still room for improvement in the “risk” dimension.

By the end of 2025, the bank’s corporate loan non-performing rate was 0.87%, up 17 basis points from the beginning of the year, attributed to increased risks in some existing real estate-related loans. The annual report shows that the bank’s main real estate-related credit risk exposure is corporate real estate loans totaling 210.181 billion yuan, down 35.038 billion yuan from the previous year. The non-performing rate of corporate real estate loans was 2.22%, up 0.43 percentage points from the previous year.

In response, Wu Leiming, Chief Compliance Officer, said that the peak of real estate risk generation has passed, and the overall real estate risk exposure is stabilizing. “In the corporate sector, there was some concentrated NPL emergence in Q1 2025, but after Q2, both overdue and new NPLs have decreased, and the new risk incidents are effectively controlled, with significant recovery effects,” Wu said.

Vice President and CFO Xiang Youzhi affirmed the bank’s effective “support” of retail through corporate business and its potential to drive growth this year. “Over the past two years, we have been accumulating assets in corporate business, and last year, the number of corporate clients increased by 13.2%, which will provide a good foundation for growth this year,” Xiang said.

“During recent years, corporate business has regained vitality through strategic support. To sustain this momentum, especially in ‘customer + product’ development, and to do so without internal competition, some adjustments are still needed,” Ji Guangheng stated frankly.

He also emphasized the importance of coordination between head and branch offices. When discussing this, Ji referred to the overall banking business, including both corporate and retail. He revealed that the top six branches within Ping An Bank account for about 60% of total revenue, meaning mid-tier branches need to develop vigorously in recent years. “We are now focusing on key regions, key branches, and key industries to elevate mid-tier branches and address development imbalances,” Ji said.

Layout: Yang Yucheng

Proofreading: Gao Yuan