Slow economic growth to put banks under pressure

Financial disintermediation

Financial disintermediation will accelerate this year, as more policy changes may arise in the fields of Internet finance and private banks. It will take more lending business away from banks and stimulate banks to make innovations

A huge amount of capital has moved from banks to the capital market, turning from debt capital to equity capital, said WuQing, deputy director of banking research at the Development Research Center of the State Council.

"That is in line with the orientation of our country's financial policy. We hope that our financial system will have a transition from the bank-led model to a market-driven one," Wu said.

From January to November 2014, the bond market grew 20.5 percent year-on-year, with bond issues of 10.2 trillion yuan, said the People's Bank of China in an announcement published on its website.

Different types of online financial businesses also expanded rapidly over the past year.

As of the end of November, the number of peer-to-peer lending companies stood at 1,540, with out-standing loans hitting 89.64 billion yuan, up 20 percent month-on-month. Such outstanding loans probably reached 100 billion yuan by the end of 2014, according to data from wangdaizhijia.com, a Web portal that tracks the industry.

The popularity of crowd funding and online payments is also on the rise. As of Nov 30, China had 122 crowd funding platforms. The 15 leading project-oriented platforms raised 56.65 million yuan for 347 projects in November.

During the first 11 months of last year, the growth of yuan deposits slowed down. Central bank statistics showed that yuan deposits increased by 8.76 trillion yuan year-on-year, lower than the growth of 11.41 trillion yuan a year earlier.

Lian Ping, chief economist at Shanghai-based Bank of Communications Co Ltd, said financial disinter mediation will lead to slower growth of deposits and the loss of high-quality clients.