Listed banks post better results in first quarter

Operating income of 33 lenders goes up by 15.4% y-o-y to $189.4 billion

The operating income of most of the 33 Chinese banks listed on the mainland and in Hong Kong saw double digit growth during the first quarter of this year.

According to incomplete statistics, the 33 listed lenders realized a total operating income of 1.3 trillion yuan ($189.38 billion) in the first quarter, up 15.4 percent year-on-year.

The growth in quarterly operating income was aided by higher credit issuance, which in turn helped boost the size of interest-earning assets. Lowering bank borrowing costs, higher credit card business income and steady income from the wealth management businesses also buoyed growth, said experts.

During the same period, the 33 banks together posted a 6.5 percent growth year-on-year in net profit attributable to equity holders of the parent company - the highest in recent years, although the rate was lower compared with that of their operating income growth.

Several national joint-stock commercial lenders, such as China Merchants Bank Co Ltd, Industrial Bank Co Ltd and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Co Ltd, posted net profit growth of more than 10 percent year-on-year. Some city commercial lenders even recorded a net profit growth rate of above 20 percent.

Headquartered in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, where the private sector contributed about 65 percent of the city's gross domestic product and 85 percent of the jobs, Bank of Ningbo Co Ltd integrated the comparative advantages of each of its key business areas to build comprehensive financial service solutions for clients and promote a steady profit growth for itself.

The bank realized a 3.39-billion-yuan net profit attributable to equity holders of the parent company in the first quarter, up by 20 percent year-on-year. During the same period, its net fee and commission income increased by 17.4 percent to 1.78 billion yuan.

"With the purpose of serving the real economy, Bank of Ningbo headed toward integration, innovation, transformation and upgrading, kept consolidating the basis of development, maintained a continuous and steady growth of the overall operating results, and further strengthened the ability for sustainable development," said the bank in its earnings report for the first quarter of 2019.

The bank continued to deepen and expand its services for the real economy. As of March 31, its various types of loans increased by 3.61 percent from the end of last year to 444.56 billion yuan. Among the total, corporate loans and advances reached 264.06 billion yuan, up by 6.87 percent.

China stepped up its financial support to key areas and weak links in the economy, according to data released by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission on Friday.

As of the end of the first quarter, the balance of loans offered by banking institutions to small and micro enterprises and small business owners amounted to 34.8 trillion yuan. Among the total, the balance of bank loans for small and micro enterprises with a credit line of less than 10 million yuan reached 10 trillion yuan, rising by 24.7 percent year-on-year, much higher than the growth rate of various types of loans over the same period.

"During the process of deepening supply-side structural reform in the financial sector, the CBIRC kept improving the efficiency of financial resource allocation, strengthening credit support to key areas and weak links in the economy, and stepping up the efforts to serve the real economy," said Liu Zhiqing, deputy director-general of the statistics IT and risk surveillance department of the CBIRC, the country's top banking and insurance regulator.

Shanghai Pudong Development Bank said that it has completed the first phase of issuance of its special financing bonds, approved by the CBIRC and the People's Bank of China, for small and micro enterprise loans in the China interbank bond market in March. The money raised by the 50-billion-yuan, three-year fixed-rate bonds, with a coupon rate of 3.5 percent, will be used specifically for the issuance of small and micro enterprise loans.