CICC: Mainland residents' “deposit relocation” and “deleveraging” coexist with three banks including China Merchants Bank to “outperform the industry”

The Zhitong Finance App learned that in the first half of 2026, “deposit moving” and “deleveraging” of mainland residents coexisted, with a net increase of 7.6 trillion yuan in residents' deposits, a year-on-year decrease of 3.2 trillion yuan, and the low increase reached the highest level in nearly ten years. The bank gave China Merchants Bank (03968), CCB (00939) and Bank of China (03988) a “outperforming industry” rating. The target prices were HK$60.49, HK$9.69 and HK$6.42, respectively.

The bank believes that residents' risk appetite has improved markedly compared to the same period last year, but it is basically stable compared to the second half of 2025, and has not continued to rise steeply; in terms of wealth management institutions, brokerage firms and tripartite platforms serve customers' high-risk investment needs more, and have obtained more flexible AUM and revenue growth rates.

The bank pointed out that in the first half of the year, the wealth revenue of sample banks, brokerage firms, and platform institutions increased by 7.6%, 48.7%, and 42.4% year-on-year, respectively. After excluding the impact of one-time income related to old financial management, the bank estimated a year-on-year growth rate of 16.6%, a slight decrease of 2.6 percentage points from the second half of last year, and still maintained double-digit growth. At the end of the first half of the year, retail AUM of sample banks increased 10.2% year-on-year, and wealth AUM increased 17% year-on-year. Wealth products accounted for 57% of the retail AUM increase, up 33 percentage points year-on-year; the bank estimated that the average asset comprehensive asset rate of the three sample banks for wealth management customers in the first half of the year was 0.24%, up about 3 basis points year over year and month over year 2025.

In terms of customer base, the number of private bank customers increased 15.2% year-on-year, faster than 2.7% of the number of retail customers in the sample banks; the number of brokerage customers and the size of assets under escrow also grew faster than banks. The bank also said that AI has become a commonly promoted capacity building direction for wealth management institutions.