At the 2026 interim results conference held on August 31, China Merchants Bank Co.,Ltd. President Wang Xiaoqing outlined the bank's next-phase operational strategy, emphasizing full implementation of the lender's "15th Five-Year Plan." He stressed a commitment to upholding integrity while pursuing innovation, maintaining stability with quality improvements, and accelerating the transformation across four key dimensions. The goal is to reinforce existing advantages while cultivating new characteristics to achieve a distinct edge in a competitive landscape, focusing on five strategic priorities for high-quality development.
The first priority centers on adhering to long-termism to build a formidable core competitive advantage. The bank will consistently uphold a customer-centric philosophy, leveraging wealth management to solidify its retail banking foundation, safeguarding asset quality, and enhancing technology-driven support. Grounded in professionalism and market principles, it will continuously refine its products, services, technology, and business models, perfecting its core operations. The aim is to establish a "quasi-fixed income plus" business and revenue structure, creating a resilient operational model that demonstrates flexibility in favorable cycles and robustness in downturns.
Secondly, the strategy targets seizing certain opportunities to foster new medium-to-long-term growth drivers. On the retail front, the bank will capitalize on strategic opportunities in wealth management, focusing on enhancing core asset allocation capabilities and comprehensively upgrading professional services to improve customer experience and satisfaction. On the corporate side, it will deepen industry-specialized operations, cultivate key industrial sectors, and refine differentiated strategies for branch operations to build regional competitive strengths. Seizing opportunities from the development of new quality productive forces, the bank aims to leverage synergies between the parent company and subsidiaries to establish technology finance as a new hallmark. Additionally, leveraging its unique resource advantages, it will establish a cross-border development framework involving headquarters, Hong Kong institutions, and five regional hubs to strengthen cross-border financial services.
Thirdly, the bank plans to stabilize short-term operations to secure its overall development foundation. It will focus on stabilizing net interest margins, continuously consolidating its low-cost liability advantages, and steadily enhancing risk-based pricing capabilities on the asset side. By fully unleashing the operational vitality of its subsidiaries, it intends to expand non-interest income and optimize the overall revenue structure. Seizing opportunities in the capital markets, the bank will deepen its involvement in wealth management and financial market businesses to elevate their value contribution. Through meticulous capital management, it aims to enhance returns on capital and resilience, ensuring steady operational progress.
The fourth area of focus involves accelerating intelligent transformation to solidify its technological leadership. The bank will persistently increase investment in technology, fostering deep integration and synchronization between technology and business operations. Capitalizing on the artificial intelligence wave, it will broaden the depth and breadth of AI application, empowering customer experience enhancement, internal operational efficiency, and precise risk management. Committed to building an AI-driven organization, it will strengthen talent development and deepen digital-intelligent transformation, striving to become a benchmark for intelligent transformation among banks in the AI era.
Finally, the strategy adheres to a risk-first principle to solidify the foundation for sustainable development. The bank will uphold a prudent risk culture and strictly respect operational boundaries. It will closely monitor emerging asset quality issues, focusing on preventing and mitigating risks in key areas such as retail credit and vacant real estate. By continuously reinforcing its internal control and compliance management systems, it aims to rigorously guard against credit, market, operational, and liquidity risks, underpinning the bank's high-quality and sustainable development with a comprehensive risk control framework.