Bank of Communications: Double growth in revenue and net profit by 2025, strong performance in net interest income, and an annual dividend yield of nearly 5%

Recently, Bank of Communications announced its annual report for 2025, which shows that the bank achieved a positive growth of over 2% in both revenue and net profit for the entire year, demonstrating stable performance among state-owned banks.

The report indicates that through effective reduction of funding costs, the bank’s net interest income for the year saw a year-on-year increase of 1.91%. This performance is relatively outstanding compared to peer banks, further stabilizing the bank’s core revenue base.

The report also mentioned that the bank successfully completed the implementation of a 120 billion yuan private placement plan in 2025, significantly strengthening its core capital and laying a solid foundation for subsequent credit issuance and risk resistance.

Revenue and Net Profit Exceed 2%

Financial data shows that for the entire year of 2025, Bank of Communications achieved an operating revenue of 265.071 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.02%; and a net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company of 95.622 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.18%.

As of the end of the reporting period, the total assets of the group exceeded 15 trillion yuan, reaching 15.55 trillion yuan, an increase of 4.35% compared to the end of the previous year.

During the reporting period, the bank successfully completed the issuance of 14.1 billion A-shares to specific targets such as the Ministry of Finance and China Tobacco, raising nearly 120 billion yuan in net funds. This move directly boosted its core Tier 1 capital adequacy ratio, which increased significantly by 1.19 percentage points to 11.43% compared to the end of the previous year, laying a solid foundation for subsequent credit growth and risk resistance.

Significant Achievements in Liability Management

Against the backdrop of overall pressure on interest margins in the banking industry, the bank recorded a net interest yield of 1.20% in 2025, down 7 basis points year-on-year. Although the absolute value of interest margin continues to decline, the rate of decline has gradually stabilized.

Data shows that due to the reduction in LPR and intense market competition, the average yield on customer loans for the bank decreased by 58 basis points year-on-year to 3.03% in 2025. However, by increasing the control over the regularization and long-term nature of deposits, the average cost of customer deposits for the entire year significantly decreased by 38 basis points to 1.74%. The effective reduction in funding costs meant that the bank’s net interest income for the year not only did not shrink but increased year-on-year by 1.91% to 173.075 billion yuan, stabilizing the core revenue base.

Rapid Growth in Wealth Management Revenue

Amid the dual impact of reduced distribution fees and fluctuations in the capital market, the bank’s intermediate business income demonstrated strong resilience.

In 2025, the bank achieved net income from fees and commissions of 38.183 billion yuan, an increase of 3.44% year-on-year. During the reporting period, the bank’s income from wealth management, funds, and precious metals sales grew year-on-year by 19.43%, 15.84%, and 33.18%, respectively.

By the end of the year, retail AUM (Assets Under Management) reached 5.98 trillion yuan, an increase of 8.91% from the end of the previous year; the increase in income from wealth management and agency-related businesses became the core engine driving growth in non-interest income.

Asset Indicators Optimized

In terms of asset quality, the bank overall presented a “stable and improving” trend. As of the end of 2025, the group’s non-performing loan ratio was 1.28%, down 0.03 percentage points from the beginning of the year; the provision coverage ratio further increased by 6.44 percentage points to 208.38%.

From an industry distribution perspective, the challenges in the real estate sector are being steadily resolved. The balance of non-performing loans in the corporate real estate sector decreased from 25.612 billion yuan at the end of the previous year to 21.656 billion yuan, with the non-performing loan ratio significantly declining from 4.85% to 4.20%. However, at the same time, there was an increase in non-performing rates primarily in retail credit assets, especially personal loans.

Management indicated in the financial report that the overall quality of retail credit assets in the domestic banking sector is under pressure, and the trend of the bank is generally consistent with that of major peers. Moving forward, efforts will be made to continuously strengthen business entry criteria and customer management, iteratively optimize entry strategies, enhance fraud risk control, improve collection and recovery capabilities for retail credit business, and ensure effective management of asset quality.

Reshaping the Entire Business Process with AI Technology

Looking ahead to 2026, the bank’s management provided clear strategic guidance in the financial report. With the service of “five major initiatives” as the overall traction and strengthening Shanghai’s “home court” advantage as the focal point, the bank will comprehensively advance business restructuring, technology empowerment, risk control, and value returns.

It was mentioned that the bank will embrace the “AI+” wave, reshape the new paradigm of intelligent development, and promote the transformation of financial technology from a supporting tool to a core productivity and innovation engine. Utilizing AI technology to reshape the entire business process, the bank will internally create an “AI+Operations” intelligent core, fully upgrade smart risk control, and build a digital risk management system covering the entire group, all processes, all scenarios, and all products; externally, it will construct an “AI+Service” open ecosystem to inject intelligent momentum into the real economy, such as providing dynamic supply chain financing and personalized inclusive financial solutions by analyzing industrial chain data through artificial intelligence. The bank aims to deeply integrate artificial intelligence into the bloodstream of financial services, driving the business model towards a future bank characterized by precision, adaptability, and high value.

The financial report disclosed that the bank’s investment in financial technology reached 12.342 billion yuan in 2025, accounting for 5.78% of its operating revenue. The bank has deployed over 2,500 AI intelligent assistant agents, covering scenarios such as retail inclusiveness, risk credit granting, and operational customer service.

Annual Dividend of 28.7 Billion Yuan

Regarding the dividend matters that have garnered significant market attention, the bank’s board of directors stated that in consideration of further enhancing investors’ sense of gain while balancing long-term capital requirements for development, the company will distribute the semi-annual profits for 2025 to all ordinary shareholders, with a cash dividend of 1.563 yuan (before tax) for every 10 shares, pending approval by the shareholders’ meeting in the first quarter of 2026.

Subsequently, in March 2026, the bank’s board of directors reviewed and approved a plan to distribute the 2025 annual profits to ordinary shareholders, with an additional cash dividend of 1.684 yuan (before tax) for every 10 shares. Therefore, for the fiscal year 2025, the bank distributed a total cash dividend of 28.692 billion yuan to ordinary shareholders, accounting for 32.3% of the net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company.

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