Live Performance Review | Spread Management, Retail Development, Asset Quality... SPDB Bank Management Responds to These Hot Topics

By Daily Economic News reporter | Li Yuwen    Daily Economic News editor | Bi Luming

On March 31, the management of Pudong Development Bank (SH600000, share price 10.24 yuan, market cap 341.1 billion yuan) responded to hot-button issues such as net interest margin, loan growth, and digital and intelligence-driven transformation at its 2025 annual results briefing.

In the face of challenges such as narrowing industry interest margins, Pudong Development Bank achieved marginal improvements in multiple key indicators through structural optimization, digital-intelligence-driven initiatives, and refined risk management.

By the end of 2025, Pudong Development Bank’s total assets exceeded 10 trillion yuan, up 6.55% from the end of the previous year. In the past 2025, the bank achieved operating income of 100k yuan, up 1.88%; net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company was 173.96B yuan, up 10.52%, maintaining two consecutive years of double-digit growth.

Phased progress in net interest margin management

Pudong Development Bank’s net interest margin in 2025 was 1.42%, unchanged from 2024. At the results briefing, the bank’s president, Xie Wei, said that the bank has caught up to the industry’s level of interest margin and has marginally outperformed the industry, thanks to its continued efforts to optimize its industry mix, regional mix, customer mix, and product mix, as well as to establish a top-down interest margin management system through proactive asset-liability management.

On the asset side, Pudong Development Bank implemented strategies to improve quality and efficiency and dynamically fine-tuned them, increased business support and resource assurance for key tracks, key regions, key industries, and key products, reduced low-efficiency assets such as bills, increased the proportion of higher- and middle-yield assets, and enhanced the bank’s overall asset return.

On the liability side, it adhered to deposit mobilization as a foundation and to fine management, promoting a favorable pattern in which overall liabilities saw volume growth, price decline, and quality improvement.

At the same time, in full-statement management of assets and liabilities, it continued to optimize the institutional mechanisms to improve capital management efficiency.

Xie Wei acknowledged, “Although the interest margin management in 2025 has achieved phased results, objectively speaking, compared with leading peers, the absolute level of our net interest margin is still at a relatively not-so-ideal level.”

He said that the bank will take multiple measures in the next step to strive for even better interest margin performance. First, focus on strategic value and promote in-depth fine-tuning of the asset-liability structure; second, rely on digital-intelligence-driven carriers to push deeper development across five major tracks; third, strengthen balanced management of both volume and pricing to improve its capability in refined pricing management; fourth, solidify liability quality and build an integrated settlement ecosystem across corporate banking, retail banking, and interbank business, expanding sources of low-cost, highly stable liabilities.

Personal asset management scale reaches 4.66 trillion yuan

“Under the premise that things stabilized in 2024, in 2025 Pudong Development Bank’s retail business achieved continued and improving development.” Zhang Jian, vice president of Pudong Development Bank, said at the results briefing.

According to the information, in 2025, Pudong Development Bank’s personal asset management scale (including market value) reached 4.66 trillion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 20%; savings deposits were 1.71 trillion yuan, up 10%.

In recent years, the overall retail credit business in the industry has faced some pressure. When discussing this topic, Zhang Jian provided relevant data for Pudong Development Bank. In 2025, the bank’s retail loans (excluding business-purpose loans) increased by 45 billion yuan, up 3.05%; both the incremental amount and the growth rate ranked among the top in joint-stock banks. Of this, the combined amount of mortgage loans and consumer loans increased by 28.2 billion yuan.

Zhang Jian said that in 2026, retail banking at banks will still face certain pressure, but there are also opportunities. The bank will focus on building five “cards”: large treasury management, large services, large consumption, large ecosystem, and intelligent agents.

Non-performing loan ratio at the lowest level in nearly 11 years

By the end of 2025, Pudong Development Bank’s non-performing loan ratio was 1.26%, down 0.10 percentage points from the end of the previous year, the lowest level in nearly 11 years. Its risk coverage capability continued to improve: the allowance coverage ratio was 200.72%, up 13.76 percentage points from the end of the previous year, the best level in about 10 years.

At the results briefing, Cui Bingwen, vice president of Pudong Development Bank, elaborated on some of the measures behind the improvement in asset quality.

First is client access work, namely the whitelist mechanism. Since the bank rolled it out across the whole bank last year, the total credit approval amount was about 950 billion yuan. Recently, the bank has further improved the whitelist mechanism.

Second is risk monitoring system construction. At the head-office level, the bank established an enterprise-level risk monitoring system, and at each track and each major business department, it also set up department-level risk monitoring systems, which work together and share information.

Third is the model management architecture. In the digital era, as online business and inclusive finance businesses have developed rapidly, it is necessary to have an accurate model and a model-management architecture to control risk.

Fourth is a mechanism that combines pace adjustment with mediation. In the past, in retail credit—especially mortgage business—this was Pudong Development Bank’s “keystone” business. But in recent years, under the influence of multiple factors, some customers’ repayment pressures have increased. For customers who are temporarily unable but still not in bad faith, the bank needs to help them get through the economic cycle. Currently, Pudong Development Bank has established a four-level mediation mechanism within the bank.

(Intern Cheng Xuebing also contributed to this article)

Cover image source: Economic Daily News