Vice President of China Merchants Bank, Peng Jiawen: Reducing volatility is an important sign of crossing cycles. The future risk asset allocation center will remain stable at 9% to 10%.

March 30 financial front-line news: China Merchants Bank held its 2025 annual results briefing today. Regarding questions related to risk assets, Deputy Governor Peng Jiawen said that the concept that CMB has always emphasized is to reduce volatility as much as possible and maintain stability. Over the years, the risk-asset growth rate’s central tendency for CMB has basically been at around 10% and 9%, but it will also be slightly adjusted in response to changes in the external environment. The main factors behind risk growth in 2025 are as follows:

First, the shift in capital regulatory rules in 2024 had a relatively clear effect on capital savings for that year, establishing a comparatively low base. This is a one-off factor.

Second, when retail loans face pressure, the proportion of corporate loans increases. Since the risk weight of corporate loans is also relatively higher, this to a certain extent pulls up the growth rate of risk assets.

Third, we make use of CMB’s relatively favorable capital advantages to support some off-balance-sheet businesses with relatively low risk. For example, businesses such as discounted bills (bill sales) and credit letter payment/negotiation can generate good returns but carry low risk, and they are also able to consume risk assets.

Fourth, CMB has increased its efforts in bond investments, which accordingly increases market-risk-related risk assets.

“Reducing volatility is an important indicator of how well we navigate through the cycle. In the next few years, we will still keep the central tendency of the risk-asset growth rate at the level of 9% and 10%, and make certain adjustments depending on changes in the external situation,” Peng Jiawen emphasized.

In addition, regarding questions related to the capital adequacy ratio, Peng Jiawen said that last year’s decline in the capital adequacy ratio came more from one-off factors—for example, in 2025 CMB increased its interim dividend by 25 billion yuan, which correspondingly reduced capital. The second factor is that last year, due to market volatility, the floating balance in CMB’s bond OCI account would, to a certain extent, affect the capital adequacy ratio.

In addition, Peng Jiawen said that when our capital adequacy ratio base becomes increasingly high, and when the pressure on profit growth becomes increasingly large due to market conditions, the difficulty of continuously improving capital also increases. “Despite this, we still hope—through our own efforts—to do a good job of balancing capital, risk, profitability, and business development, while maintaining a relatively stable stance and balancing the three-way relationship among capital, ROE, and dividends.”

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责任编辑：曹睿潼