Wealth Management and Fundraising Battle Escalates: The 20 Trillion Yuan Club Expands, and Agency Distribution Channels Become the Decisive Factor

Li Yunqi China Securities Journal

In recent days, wealth management companies have successively released their 2025 second-half wealth management business reports. Combining those findings with the 2025 annual reports published by listed banks, China Securities Journal reporters found that last year many wealth management companies’ assets under management (AUM) grew significantly. The “two-trillion-yuan club” expanded to include five companies: CMB Wealth, Xingyin Wealth, Xinyin Wealth, Agricultural Bank Wealth, and Industrial and Commercial Bank Wealth. When revisiting the reasons behind the AUM growth, multiple wealth management companies cited expanded distribution channels and optimized product layout.

Faced with opportunities for residents to reinvest their time deposits, the wealth management industry has a promising development outlook. Making every effort to deliver better customer service, and improving investors’ holding experience and sense of gain, are mandatory answers for wealth management companies.

Xinyin Wealth’s AUM Jumps to Third Place

Data from China Wealth Management Network shows that at the end of 2025, the outstanding wealth management company AUM totaled 3.071 trillion yuan, up 16.72% year over year. In terms of AUM, CMB Wealth, Xingyin Wealth, and Xinyin Wealth ranked the top three at the end of 2025, with asset management scales of 2.64 trillion yuan, 2.43 trillion yuan, and 2.30 trillion yuan, respectively. Meanwhile, Agricultural Bank Wealth and Industrial and Commercial Bank Wealth also exceeded 2 trillion yuan in AUM, expanding the “two-trillion-yuan club” to the five companies mentioned above.

Among them, Xinyin Wealth saw relatively fast AUM growth in 2025, placing third. At the same time, the rankings of Agricultural Bank Wealth and Industrial and Commercial Bank Wealth both fell by one place. In its annual report, China CITIC Bank stated that in 2025, Xinyin Wealth fully responded to investors’ increasingly diversified wealth management needs. Based on doing a solid job as the main supplier of fixed-income products, it also strived to be an important supplier of structured-with-option (equity-linked) products. By the end of 2025, the outstanding scale of structured-with-option products was 307.1k yuan, up 26.4k yuan from the end of last year, and the proportion of structured-with-option products among newly issued products rose from 9.68% to 14.70%. The company also accelerated the improvement of its ability to invest in equity assets, using multi-asset and multi-strategy portfolio investing, thereby effectively boosting wealth management returns.

In 2025, the AUM growth of multiple wealth management companies was impressive. By the end of 2025, the AUM of Everbright Wealth, Xinyin Wealth, Postal Savings Wealth, and Minsheng Wealth were all up more than 300 billion yuan from the beginning of the year. Among wealth management companies affiliated with joint-stock banks, the AUM of Bohai Wealth and Ningbo Wealth both increased by more than 40% year over year. The AUM growth of two joint-venture wealth management companies—Fauji Bank Agricultural Wealth and Huihua Wealth—was even more than 100% for both.

Kong Xiang, head of non-bank financial services industry at Guosen Securities, said that from the combined data, in 2025 the wealth management product scale of the sample wealth management companies grew 13% year over year, and their total net profit grew 16% year over year. Profit growth was faster than AUM growth. This is related to wealth management companies generally reducing cash-management-type products and increasing the proportion of multi-asset products, which charge higher management fees and also have the chance to earn performance-based splits in excess of a benchmark. As deposit interest rates declined, after residents’ time deposits matured, they searched for “low-volatility, steady-return” products as substitutes, which promoted a notable expansion of multi-asset wealth management products.

**　Emphasize Product Optimization and Distributor Expansion**

When going through the 2025 annual reports of various banks, it can be seen that expanding distribution channels and optimizing product layout are important engines for wealth management companies’ scale growth.

Taking Everbright Wealth as an example, as of the end of 2025, the company’s total AUM was 1,945.963 billion yuan, up 24.3k yuan year over year. In its annual report, Everbright Bank said that in 2025 it deepened the construction of the “Seven-Colored Sunshine” product system, focusing on strengthening professional capabilities in multi-asset and multi-strategy research and investment, and responding to market demand through diversified allocations. As of the end of 2025, the outstanding balance of Everbright Wealth’s hybrid-category wealth management products was 23k yuan, accounting for 9.47% of the company’s total wealth management products. This ratio is at a relatively high level within the industry.

The growth of Postal Savings Wealth’s AUM was also outstanding. In its annual report, Postal Savings Bank said that as of the end of 2025, Postal Savings Wealth’s product size was 1,317.152 billion yuan, up 28.81% from the end of the previous year. In terms of incremental value and growth rate, it ranked among the top in the industry. Among them, Postal Savings Bank’s channel scale increased by 20k yuan, and the scale of third-party distribution increased by 337.46B yuan. It is worth noting that Postal Savings Wealth accelerated the broadening of its third-party distribution. It cumulatively signed contracts with 58 out-of-group (non-parent) distribution channels. The coverage rate of major channels was leading in the industry. The number of institutional clients grew by 9.19%. The institutional client marketing and customer acquisition service system, with parent-distribution, out-of-group distribution, and direct sales moving forward in parallel, continued to be improved. The growth in AUM also drove an improvement in Postal Savings Wealth’s performance. In the first half of 2025, Postal Savings Wealth achieved operating income of 148.96B yuan and net profit of 1.171 billion yuan. Both indicators increased by 14.55% and 13.69%, respectively, compared with 2024.

Bohai Wealth’s product scale also grew significantly. At the end of 2025, Bohai Wealth’s managed product scale was 184.24B yuan, up 202.94B yuan from the end of 2024, a growth rate of 50.11%. In its annual report, Bohai Bank stated that Bohai Wealth achieved notable results in expanding out-of-group distribution channels. By the end of 2025, it had reached distribution cooperation with 116 out-of-group institutions. The out-of-group distribution channels cover state-owned large banks, joint-stock banks, city and rural commercial banks, private banks, and others. The scale of out-of-group distributed wealth management products was 84.18B yuan, up 1.98B yuan from the end of 2024, representing growth of 209.75%. Notably, although the AUM grew significantly, the performance increase of Bohai Wealth was relatively small. In 2025, Bohai Wealth achieved operating income of 417 million yuan and net profit of 222 million yuan. Compared with 2024, the two indicators rose by 0.72% and 0.45%, respectively.

An industry insider said that developing out-of-group distribution channels helps quickly increase AUM, but it is also necessary to tilt quality assets toward out-of-group distribution channels, and care for in-group clients may inevitably be less than comprehensive.

**　Strive to Enhance Investors’ Sense of Gain**

Against the backdrop of a fast overall industry growth rate, the AUM growth of some wealth management companies has stalled or even declined. Ping An Bank’s annual report shows that as of the end of 2025, the balance of wealth management products managed by Ping An Wealth was 1,092.211 billion yuan, down about 10% year over year. In 2025, Ping An Wealth achieved net profit of 1.17B yuan, down more than 20% from the prior year. Comparing the semiannual report on Ping An Wealth’s wealth management business shows that in 2025, the scale of fixed-income-type products decreased by 248.93B yuan, which is the main factor leading to the company’s AUM decline.

The aforementioned industry player told reporters that last year Ping An Wealth carried out a strategic transformation, mainly relying on sales by its parent bank and reducing out-of-group distribution. This may be an important reason for last year’s AUM decline.

Qingyin Wealth also had an unfavorable year in 2025. In 2025, Qingyin Wealth achieved operating income of 402 million yuan and net profit of 187 million yuan, down 26.91% and 37.04%, respectively, from 2024.

Tan Yiming, chief fixed-income analyst at China Merchants Securities, said that after the net asset value (NAV) based transformation in the wealth management industry has been fully implemented, the industry has no choice but to face market volatility directly, and product experience may be reshaped. In the short term, given the trend of residents reinvesting time deposits, and also because wealth management products currently still have relative advantages in channels and yield, some maturing residents’ deposits can still be absorbed. From a long-term perspective, if clients’ product holding experience continues to be unsatisfactory, it is not ruled out that there could be scale outflows.

Meeting diversified needs, many wealth management companies have focused on improving investors’ holding experience and sense of gain. Bohai Wealth said it has continuously enriched its product lineup and worked to improve product performance to create stable value for broad investors. It重点推出 mixed-category and fixed-income-enhanced wealth management products, forming a multi-strategy product matrix including “fixed income + dividends, diversified strategies, convertible bonds, gold, new stock subscriptions, time deposits, deposit certificates, and industry rotation.” This provides clients with differentiated product offerings to meet different wealth management needs. In 2025, there were 253 closed-end products maturing, and the redemption ratio for cases below the lower limit of the performance comparison benchmark was 99.60%. It served more than 1.1 million investors and created returns exceeding 4.8 billion yuan for investors.

Xiao Feifei, chief bank-industry analyst at Citic Securities, believes that in 2026 the wealth management industry should focus on three tasks: optimizing asset allocation strategies, optimizing product design, and strengthening investor education. Wealth management companies should build a mindset for diversified allocation across major asset classes, achieving balanced allocation of various products such as fixed income, equities, and commodities. By allocating to assets like stocks, gold, and REITs, they can diversify and disperse single risk in the bond market, and use strategies such as derivatives to hedge interest-rate risk. In addition, by cultivating investment risk concepts and strengthening management of investors’ risk expectations, they can further refine and improve systems related to investor suitability management, strengthen end-to-end information disclosure for products, and provide timely risk reminders.

(Editor: Qian Xiaorui)

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