Industrial Bank 2025 Annual Report: Asset-Liability Structure Optimization, Net Interest Margin Remains Resilient

The year 2025 marks the conclusion of the “14th Five-Year Plan” and is also a crucial year for the banking industry to refine resilience and accelerate transformation amid complex changes. As the narrowing interest margins and revenue pressures become common challenges for the industry, Industrial Bank has delivered a remarkable performance report—achieving positive growth in both revenue and net profit for two consecutive years, creating an impressive “bottoming out and rising” smile curve.

At the earnings briefing, Chairman Lv Jiajin stated, “During the ‘14th Five-Year’ period, the century-old changes are accelerating, the conversion of old and new driving forces is profound, and the massive release of financial risks has led commercial banks to face a vastly different operating environment compared to the previous twenty years, especially having endured multiple tests of low interest rates, narrow spreads, and high risks. Objectively speaking, commercial banks face significant challenges in their operational development. In this context, we continue to rise to the challenge and forge ahead.”

Stable operations with improved quality, continuous risk convergence

The annual report shows that in 2025, Industrial Bank’s operating income reached 212.741 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.24%; net profit attributable to shareholders was 77.469 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.34%. Net income from fees and commissions was 25.891 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.45%, reversing the previous downward trend. The management scale of the group’s five asset management subsidiaries totaled 3.65 trillion yuan, growing by 26.07% compared to the beginning of the year.

It is worth mentioning that Industrial Bank achieved a year-on-year growth of 0.24% in operating income and a 0.34% increase in net profit for the entire year, further expanding the growth rate of 0.12% compared to the first three quarters. The consecutive positive growth in revenue and net profit over two years demonstrates strong operational resilience.

Meanwhile, the bank’s risk costs have declined from a high level, and asset quality remains stable. By 2025, the peak of newly incurred non-performing loans has passed, with impairment provisions down 4.26% year-on-year. Through legal empowerment, classified operations, and tackling disposals, the bank has recovered 16.2 billion yuan from write-offs, exceeding 10 billion yuan for five consecutive years, effectively bolstering profits.

As of the end of 2025, the bank’s non-performing loan ratio stood at 1.08%, in line with the semi-annual and third-quarter figures; the attention loan ratio was 1.69%, down 0.02 percentage points from the beginning of the year; the overdue loan ratio was 1.49%, down 0.1 percentage points from the beginning of the year.

In key risk areas, Industrial Bank continues to strengthen its management and control. In the real estate sector, the balance of corporate real estate financing decreased by 53.3 billion yuan from the beginning of the year, with newly incurred non-performing loans declining year-on-year; in the local government financing platform area, the debt balance reduced by 46.643 billion yuan, with a cumulative reduction of 35.8 billion yuan in business exposure through special bonds; in the credit card sector, the non-performing rate and overdue rate decreased by 0.29 percentage points and 0.08 percentage points, respectively, compared to the beginning of the year. In the retail loan sector, the non-performing loan rate stood at 0.88%, which is relatively good for the industry.

At the earnings briefing, Vice President Sun Xiongpeng stated, “Over the past five years, Industrial Bank has withstood market tests, and asset quality has improved steadily. In 2025, despite facing many challenges, we have optimized the credit structure and utilized digital risk control measures, resulting in overall asset quality meeting expectations.”

Dual efforts in asset and liability management, maintaining net interest margin resilience

In 2025, Industrial Bank demonstrated strong proactivity and refinement in asset-liability management, providing solid support for maintaining net interest margin resilience through dual efforts on the asset side—“optimizing structure and focusing on the real economy”—and on the liability side—“reducing costs and enhancing efficiency.”

On the asset side, the bank adhered to a strategy of “stabilizing scale and optimizing structure,” achieving continuous structural optimization while maintaining stable growth in total loans through precise allocation of credit resources. By the end of 2025, Industrial Bank’s total loan amount reached 5.95 trillion yuan, nearing the 6 trillion yuan mark, increasing by 229.1 billion yuan since the beginning of the year, with steady expansion in scale.

From a structural perspective, the bank has directed credit resources toward national strategic orientations and key areas of the real economy: green loans increased by 19.05% compared to the beginning of the year, technology loans grew by 18.47%, and medium- and long-term loans to the manufacturing sector rose by 14.91%, with all three growth rates significantly exceeding the overall loan growth rate, achieving year-on-year increases. Meanwhile, loans in real estate, leasing, and business services increased by only 10.1 billion yuan year-on-year, reflecting the bank’s clear orientation toward “having both inflows and outflows while focusing on the real economy” in asset deployment.

The continuous optimization of the asset structure not only improved the overall quality of credit assets but also laid a solid foundation for stabilizing the interest margin. The increasing proportion of green, technology, and manufacturing loans, which are highly aligned with the direction of real economic development, effectively safeguarded the bank’s asset quality and returns, offsetting the impact of interest rate declines on asset-side yields. In the retail loan sector, the bank’s non-performing loan rate was only 0.88%, which is relatively good for the industry, further consolidating its asset quality advantage.

On the liability side, Industrial Bank focused on “increasing scale and reducing costs,” continuously lowering interest expense costs through deep market engagement, optimizing structures, and fine management. By the end of 2025, the bank’s total deposits reached 5.93 trillion yuan, increasing by 397.3 billion yuan since the beginning of the year.

Among these, retail deposits exceeded 1.8 trillion yuan, achieving a self-balancing of retail assets and liabilities, further solidifying the foundation of liabilities. From a structural perspective, the bank deeply engaged in key scenarios such as payroll and acquiring, driving the balance of settlement deposits to account for 39.48% of total retail deposits, with the proportion of low-cost deposits continuously rising. From a cost perspective, through meticulous liability management, the bank achieved a year-on-year decrease of 33 basis points in the deposit interest rate to 1.65%, with a significant decline of 59 basis points in the interbank deposit interest rate.

While effectively lowering liability costs, Industrial Bank also enhanced the stability of low-cost deposits by improving customer operational capabilities. By 2025, the bank had 115 million retail customers, an increase of 4.57 million from the beginning of the year, among which dual gold customers and private banking clients grew by 12.87% and 12.83%, respectively; potential and above clients among corporate customers and value clients grew by 10.57% and 12.25%, respectively. The “dual increase” in both quantity and quality of the customer base provided a continuous source of vitality for the stable accumulation of low-cost deposits.

It is precisely the dual efforts of “optimizing structure” on the asset side and “reducing costs” on the liability side that have enabled Industrial Bank to achieve a turnaround from negative to positive in net interest income and record positive growth for three consecutive years against the backdrop of narrowing interest margins across the industry. In 2025, the bank’s net interest income reached 148.752 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 0.44%, turning from negative to positive compared to the first three quarters, becoming an important cornerstone for stable revenue growth. The net interest margin was 1.71%, with a year-on-year decrease of only 11 basis points, better than the industry average, demonstrating strong resilience in interest margins and operational resilience.

From “three cards” to “four cards”: Strategic upgrade anchors the new goal of becoming a value bank

Looking back on the “14th Five-Year Plan,” Industrial Bank achieved multidimensional improvements in customer, scale, structure, efficiency, quality, and status amid a complex and changing external environment. The number of corporate customers increased from 930,000 to 1.67 million, an increase of nearly 80%; the number of retail customers rose from 79.56 million to 115 million; total assets entered the 11 trillion yuan mark, firmly ranking second among joint-stock banks; the reduction in net interest margin was better than the industry average, with operating income and net profit ranking among the top joint-stock banks; the non-performing loan ratio declined from 1.25% to 1.08%, and the provision coverage ratio rose from 218.83% to 228.41%; the bank’s global ranking among banks improved from 21st to 14th, and its MSCI ESG rating increased from A to AAA.

Entering the “15th Five-Year Plan,” Industrial Bank is expanding and upgrading its core advantages from the “three cards” of “green banking, wealth banking, and investment banking” to the “four cards” of “technology finance, green finance, wealth banking, and investment banking,” building core competitiveness to serve the financial “five major topics” with distinctive advantages. Among them, the financing balance of technology finance reached 2 trillion yuan, increasing by 15.98% from the beginning of the year; the balance of technology finance loans was 1.12 trillion yuan, growing by 18.47%, with the construction of the “fourth card” showing initial results.

In his speech, Chairman Lv Jiajin proposed a new round of development strategy: “Adhering to the ‘five transformations’ of digitalization, greening, internationalization, integration, and ecologicalization as guidance, we will deepen our efforts in industrial finance around the construction of a modern industrial system, continuously enhance the four cards of technology finance, green finance, wealth banking, and investment banking, and comprehensively build a first-class value bank.”

From the operational results of 2025, Industrial Bank has made substantial progress in optimizing asset-liability structure and implementing strategic upgrades. Against the backdrop of general pressure in the banking industry, the bank has demonstrated a path of “pursuing progress while maintaining stability and winning with quality” based on data, structure, and capability. Looking ahead, with the continuous deepening of the core advantages of the “four cards,” Industrial Bank is expected to build a more solid virtuous cycle between serving the real economy and achieving its own high-quality development.

(Edited by Wang Zhiqiang HF013)

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