China Merchants Bank Emerges as Leading Private Banker with over 3 Trillion Yuan in AUM

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China’s leading lenders are rapidly expanding their private banking services as the country sees an ongoing surge in the number of its high net-worth individuals.

The assets under management (AUM) of the private banking operations of six Chinese lenders exceeded one trillion yuan last year according to their 2020 annual reports.

These six lenders included:

  1. China Merchants Bank (2.77 trillion yuan).
  2. Bank of China (1.85 trillion yuan).
  3. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (1.8 trillion yuan).
  4. China Construction Bank (1.78 trillion yuan).
  5. Agricultural Bank of China (1.7 trillion yuan).
  6. Ping An Bank (1.13 trillion yuan).

Wang Jianzhong (汪建中), CMB vice-president, said that CMB’s private banking operations have continued to see strong growth since the start of 2021, enabling it to cement its leading position in the sphere.

“In April 2021 we had over 100,000 private banking clients whose average monthly and daily assets exceeded 10 million yuan, and the total assets that we managed for clients exceeded 3 trillion yuan, putting us in first position in the domestic banking sector,” said Wang.

Four out of the biggest providers of private banking services in China are big state-owned lenders, with the “2021 China Private Wealth Report” (2021中国私人财富报告) indicating that they are the preferred choice for 52% of Chinese high net-worth individuals.

China was host to 2.62 million high net-worth individuals with investible assets of over 10 million yuan in 2020, with the report forecasting that this figure will approach 3 million, and that their total investible assets will exceed 90 trillion yuan.

44% of China’s high-net worth individuals reside in one of the five province-level administrative entities of Guangdong, Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu or Zhejiang.