China CITIC Bank records highest net profit growth in five years

China CITIC Bank Corp Ltd realized net profit attributable to its shareholders of 44.51 billion yuan ($6.63 billion) in 2018, up 4.57 percent year-on-year, posting the highest net profit growth in the last five years.

With total assets exceeding 6 trillion yuan, the Beijing-based medium-sized bank focused its efforts on pushing forward retail banking transformation to build a robust "troika" business structure that consists of corporate banking, retail banking and financial markets, said the bank in its annual results announcement.

The transformation of retail banking achieved remarkable progress. As of the end of last year, retail assets under management reached 1.8 trillion yuan, netting an annual increase of 298.5 billion yuan. The group's personal deposits recorded 712.5 billion yuan, growing by 34 percent year-on-year, and personal loan balance rose by 21 percent to 1.48 trillion yuan during the same period. Credit card transaction volume exceeded 2 trillion yuan, taking up nearly 7 percent of the multi-bank transaction market.

For the reporting period, the group's profit before tax from corporate banking, retail banking and financial markets accounted for 44.6 percent, 29 percent and 25.3 percent of the total, respectively, indicating a more reasonable profit structure and greater capacity for sustainable development, the bank said.

Lv Tiangui, business director and general manager of the retail banking department at China CITIC Bank, said the bank has steadily improved the contribution of retail banking to its value. Net operating income from retail banking accounted for 34.7 percent of its total of 165.77 billion yuan last year, and the contribution grew by nearly 10 percentage points during the last 10 years.

"In 2019, we will adhere to the customer-oriented approach, step up smart operation and strengthen digitization, platform operation and brand construction, in efforts to enlarge our client base while increasing personal deposits and the size of retail banking assets under management," he said at a news conference on Wednesday.

In terms or asset quality and risk management, the group recorded a year-end non-performing loan ratio of 1.77 percent, up by 0.09 percentage point year-on-year. Its NPL balance also rose by 19 percent to 64.03 billion yuan.

The increase was generated in part by more stringent criteria for recognition of non-performing loans, as the group proactively included loans overdue for 90 days and more in NPLs, said Hu Gang, vice-president of the bank.

He noted that the bank accelerated the efforts to consolidate asset quality last year by reducing its loans to some industries that were compressing their production capacity, including some interbank innovation related assets in the balance sheet, and increasing NPL write-offs by 31.5 percent year-on-year to 46.94 billion yuan as of Dec 31, 2018.

As a result, loans overdue for 90 days and more took up 92.41 percent of the group's total non-performing loans as of the end of last year, declining by 16.97 percentage points year-on-year.

Other factors such as China's economic restructuring and its trade frictions with the US also lead to the growth of NPLs and the NPL ratio. In addition, the bank was in the middle of concentrated outbreaks of NPLs in certain regions such as North China and East China's Shandong province, he said.