CITIC sees increase in retail banking business

The contribution of retail banking to net non-interest income of China CITIC Bank Corp Ltd increased significantly - 40 percent year-on-year in 2017, the bank announced Monday.

Last year, retail banking contributed 34.17 billion yuan ($5.45 billion), or 60 percent, to the net non-interest income of CITIC Bank, a Beijing-based national joint-stock commercial lender.

According to its annual results announcement for calendar year 2017, credit cards contributed 28.6 billion yuan to total net non-interest income from retail banking, accounting for 85.2 percent of the total.

The bank has started implementing its 2018-2020 development plan. Previously, it highlighted corporate banking as the main body and retail banking and financial markets business as two wings. But in the next three years, the bank will gradually shift its business positioning from "One Body Two Wings" to "Troika", which means striving for balanced development of corporate, retail and financial markets business, bank chairperson Li Qingping said.

Thanks to continued improvement of the bank's income structure, net profit attributable to its shareholders grew 2.25 percent from the previous year to 42.57 billion yuan in 2017.

In addition, the bank recorded a trend of asset quality improvement and continuing allowance-base consolidation.

As of the end of last year, its nonperforming loan ratio dropped one basis point year-on-year to 1.68 percent, although its balance of NPLs increased by 10.43 percent to 53.65 billion yuan.

Its allowance coverage ratio stood at 169.44 percent, 13.94 percentage points higher than the previous year's end; and the ratio of allowance for impairment of loans to total loans rose 22 basis points to 2.84 percent, according to the bank's annual results announcement.