All 26 brokerages are expected to see increased performance in 2025, with 7 achieving over 10 billion yuan in revenue.

Against the backdrop of active trading in China’s domestic capital markets in 2025, the Shanghai Composite Index rose by double digits for the year, and the average daily trading value across the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets refreshed historical records, the securities industry has also turned in an impressive set of results. As of March 30, 26 listed securities firms and securities-concept stocks have already released their 2025 performance data. In terms of revenue and net profit, all 26 institutions are profitable, and year-over-year growth has become a clear industry trend. Among them, Citic Securities and Guotai Junan are far ahead, with seven institutions entering the “double-100-billion-yuan club.”

Benefiting from the continued rebound in performance, the per-employee compensation of most securities firms has also halted its prior downward trend and improved. By contrast, the total annual executive compensation has continued to narrow, with most still seeing year-over-year declines, the largest drop reaching 37%. In the view of industry participants, the securities firms’ compensation system has entered a long-term adjustment cycle: shifting from “maximizing short-term incentives” to a “long-term, steady orientation,” and divergence in compensation structures between executives and employees may become the norm.

Seven institutions enter the “double-100-billion-yuan club”

With multiple leading brokerages, including Huatai, Galaxy, CICC, and 广发, disclosing their latest annual reports on March 30, the number of listed securities firms and securities-concept stocks that have released their 2025 results has increased to 26. Overall, the 26 institutions collectively recorded operating revenue of RMB 454.71B, up 31.93% year over year; the total attributable net profit to shareholders also reached RMB 185.06B, up 44.61% year over year.

Looking at each individual firm, for operating revenue, Citic Securities ranks first with RMB 74.85B, followed closely by Guotai Junan with RMB 63.11B, becoming the only two brokerages to cross the RMB 60 billion revenue threshold. In the same period, 13 other brokerages—such as Huatai Securities, 广发 Securities, and CICC—also reported operating revenue exceeding RMB 10 billion.

For attributable net profit, Citic Securities and Guotai Junan also lead by a wide margin, reaching RMB 27.81B and RMB 16.38B respectively, becoming the only two listed securities firms with attributable net profit above RMB 20 billion. In addition, firms also achieving more than RMB 10 billion in profit include Huatai Securities, 广发 Securities, China Galaxy, Merchants Securities, and Oriental Fortune, at RMB 12.09B, RMB 634.2k, RMB 12.52 billion, RMB 12.35 billion, and RMB 513.7k, respectively.

Overall, seven institutions have already entered the “double-100-billion-yuan club” in both operating revenue and attributable net profit. By comparison, in 2024 there were five firms in that group, with 广发 Securities and Oriental Fortune newly added as well. Furthermore, if you sort brokerages by those with attributable net profit exceeding RMB 9 billion, CICC, Shenwan Hongyuan, and Citic Securities & Investment may also be poised to become “reserve members.”

From the perspective of year-over-year growth rates, all 26 institutions recorded increases in both revenue and net profit. Among them, Guotai Junan and Guolian Minsheng, which completed integrations in 2025, led the industry in both operating revenue and attributable net profit, with year-over-year growth of 87.4% and 113.52% for Guotai Junan, and Guolian Minsheng reaching 185.99% and 405.49%, respectively.

Besides the two institutions, some brokerages also posted substantial growth in attributable net profit in 2025. For example, among leading brokerages, CICC and Shenwan Hongyuan both saw growth of over 70%. Meanwhile, Xiangcai Co., Ltd.’s attributable net profit increased by 325.15%, demonstrating the high elasticity of performance among smaller and mid-sized brokerages.

Tian Lihui, a professor of finance at Nankai University, analyzed that the overall improvement in 2025 brokerages’ industry performance was mainly driven by a dual boost: the rebound in the capital markets and the release of policy dividends. From the annual reports already disclosed, proprietary investment business and wealth management business have become the core engines of earnings growth. Proprietary investment stands out, mainly because the upward movement of market indices substantially increased fair value change gains—an most direct reflection of brokerages’ balance sheets being repaired. As for growth in wealth management, it reflects the early results of the industry’s transformation from merely acting as a pass-through for transactions to providing asset allocation services. These two areas jointly form the main source of brokerages’ earnings elasticity, also confirming the strong positive correlation between brokerage profitability and market sentiment in an environment with ample liquidity.

Employees’ average compensation increases by up to one-third

Against the backdrop of a continued earnings rebound over the past few years, most listed brokerages’ employees’ average compensation in 2025 has finally stopped falling and stabilized, with some recovery as well.

Based on data from 东方财富Choice, using the formula “average employee compensation = (compensation paid to employees + end-of-period accrued employee compensation - beginning-of-period accrued employee compensation) / [(average number of employees at the beginning of the period + average number of employees at the end of the period) / 2]”, and excluding Guotai Junan and Guolian Minsheng, whose data may have discrepancies due to integration-related reasons, among the 24 brokerages and securities-concept stocks that have disclosed their 2025 annual reports, as many as 21 institutions saw employees’ average compensation rise year over year in 2025. From the range of growth rates, the increases are mostly concentrated between 5% and 20%.

Specifically, Huā’ an Securities’ average employee compensation increase is the most pronounced, at 30.96%. Next are Industrial Securities, CICC, and Zhongyuan Securities, with increases of 26.35%, 24.4%, and 20.89%, respectively. Meanwhile, Beijing Business Today’s reporter learned from sources related to Guolian Minsheng that, based on simulating and comparing the 2024 data on the basis of a combined calculation, the company’s average compensation per employee (including benefits) was RMB 630,000 in 2025, up 21.2% year over year; average compensation per employee (excluding benefits) was RMB 513.7k, up 24%.

As for the compensation changes among the top three performers in industry earnings, the increases were all within 5%. Among them, Citic Securities rose from RMB 779.8k in 2024 to RMB 812.8k in 2025, up 4.23%; Huatai Securities rose from RMB 639.6k to RMB 669.1k, up 4.61%. In addition, for Guotai Junan, if the initial number of employees is calculated using (the total number of employees at the end of 2024 for Guotai Junan + the total number of employees in mid-2024 for Haitong Securities), then its average annual compensation per employee in 2025 is approximately RMB 709.8k, up 0.02%.

It is worth noting that many brokerages whose average employee compensation rebounded in 2025 had already undergone a long period of compensation adjustment. Looking back at data from 2021 to 2024, some brokerages’ average employee compensation had been reduced for two or three consecutive years during that period, with the overall reduction reaching as much as 40%. At that time, some analysts also pointed out that, due to increasingly stringent regulatory requirements for the standardization of financial institutions’ compensation systems, some brokerages adjusted their compensation structures—such as optimizing performance appraisal mechanisms and increasing the proportion of compensation deferred—changes that may lead to lower current compensation for employees.

For this round of a modest rebound in average employee compensation, Tian Lihui believes it is a lagging reflection of the industry’s business-cycle recovery, showing a relatively reasonable market-based linkage between compensation and performance. From the positive side, this change helps stabilize talent pipelines and ease the pressure of core employee attrition caused by industry pay cuts in prior years. More deeply, expectations for a moderate compensation rebound can leave room for the industry to attract excellent talent. For the securities industry that is in a critical period of transforming into professional services such as investment banking and wealth management, the stability of human capital is crucial. Of course, the overall rebound is restrained, which also reflects the industry’s more cautious and rational approach to compensation management.

Total executive compensation continues to narrow

Compared with the rebound in employees’ average compensation, in 2025 the total compensation of brokerage executives continued to decline. Based on the 26 listed brokerages and securities-concept stocks disclosed so far, the total executive compensation for 2025 was approximately RMB 372 million in aggregate, down 8.2% year over year and narrowing further compared with 2024.

Among them, as many as 22 brokerages saw their total executive compensation decline year over year. Comparing with the 2024 annual report data, during the integration and adjustment period in 2025, Guolian Minsheng and Guotai Junan added several executives, causing their total executive compensation to rise.

Among brokerages with year-over-year declines, 10 firms—including Shenwan Hongyuan, China Galaxy, and Huā’ an Securities—saw total executive compensation drop by more than 20% year over year. Among them, Shenwan Hongyuan’s decline is as high as 37.41%, while the drops for China Galaxy and Huā’ an Securities were also 30.76% and 29.21%, respectively.

Why did a noticeable “scissor gap” emerge between employees’ average compensation and the total executive compensation? In the view of analysts, this is mainly driven by multiple factors, including regulatory guidance and adjustments to corporate governance logic.

Bo Wenxi, deputy chairperson of the China Enterprise Capital Alliance, believes there are three main factors. Specifically: regulatory compliance pressure—over recent years, “pay restrictions” requirements in the industry have continued to intensify, and executive compensation for brokerages with backgrounds in centrally administered state-owned enterprises faces even stricter constraints under window guidance; deferred payment mechanisms—executive performance-based compensation is generally deferred for 3 to 5 years, so some of the compensation paid out in 2025 actually corresponds to performance trough periods in 2022 to 2024; and risk-linked adjustments—regulators require executive compensation to be tied to compliance and risk control as well as long-term performance, so near-term profit growth may not immediately convert into cash compensation.

“This indicates that the securities firms’ compensation system has entered a long-term adjustment cycle: shifting from ‘maximizing short-term incentives’ to a ‘long-term, steady orientation,’ and divergence in the compensation structure between executives and employees may become the norm. In the future, executive compensation will rely more on long-term equity-based incentives, while employees’ compensation flexibility that fluctuates with business cycles will be enhanced,” Bo Wenxi said.

Tian Lihui also noted that the divergence between executive compensation and ordinary employee compensation reflects deeper logic behind compensation structure adjustments in the industry. This “scissor gap” phenomenon is directly related to the shift in compensation management concepts under regulatory guidance in recent years, where industry consensus has formed around “cap the high end, expand the middle range, and lower the low end.” Concretely, the decline in executive compensation is influenced both by the further strengthening of deferred compensation mechanisms and by the rigid constraints on executives’ pay under the state-owned enterprise performance appraisal framework. It is important to point out that this is not periodic fluctuation; rather, it signals that the industry’s compensation system has moved into a long-term structural adjustment phase. In the future, compensation will place greater emphasis on being tied to risk cycles and matched with long-term performance. The incentive and constraint mechanisms for executives will become more stable, and the incentive weight for backbone employees is expected to increase, helping build a more sustainable talent development landscape.

Beijing Business Today reporter Liu Yuyang