For the first time since 2023, China Construction Bank (CCB) posted positive year-on-year growth in both operating income and net profit. In the first half of 2026, total operating income (TOI) rose 10.48% to RMB 426.33 billion ($62 billion), maintaining double-digit growth for a second consecutive quarter. Net profit rose 5.56% to RMB 171.68 billion ($25 billion), reversing recent declines . CCB’s recovery mirrored a wider sector improvement. Average TOI growth among China’s mega banks turned positive for the first time in years, reaching 9.34%, while average net profit growth recovered to 5.03%. CCB outperformed both averages. The bank attributed the results to five reinforcing factors. These were NIM stabilisation, more diversified non-interest income, technology investment and cost discipline, stable asset quality and deeper coordination through its “four integrations”. These cover commercial and investment banking, corporate and personal banking, domestic and foreign currencies and group-wide operations. At CCB’s interim results briefing in Hong Kong and Beijing on 28 August, Zhang Yi, Vice Chairman, Executive Director and President of CCB, said the bank had demonstrated “resilience in organic growth” and maintained “balanced and coordinated core indicators” in the first half of 2026. Beyond the headline results, three dimensions explain the turnaround. Non-interest income and bond-related earnings jointly supported revenue growth, changes in the asset and liability structure contributed more than repricing to NIM stabilisation and AI, cost discipline and risk management helped convert growth into returns. Non-interest income and the bond business jointly support revenue growth Net non-interest income rose 16.31% to RMB 115.38 billion ($16.81 billion), increasing its share of operating income from 25.70% to 27.06% . This was a larger improvement than the peer average. CCB’s fee mix stands out through the contributions from clearing and settlement, custody and advisory and consulting services. Each accounts for a materially larger share of non-interest income than the peer average. Han Jing, Executive Deputy President of CCB, identified two pillars supporting the bank’s RMB 64.29 billion ($9.37 billion) in net fee and commission income. The first was wealth management, asset management and custody, where personal wealth management assets exceeded RMB 5.3 trillion ($781.08 billion) and custody assets reached RMB 24.45 trillion ($3.60 trillion). The second was corporate banking, where settlement volume rose more than 40% year on year to RMB 409 trillion. Han said, “In response to the development of capital markets and the continued expansion of direct financing, we are accelerating our transformation from a credit intermediary into a service intermediary.” Advisory and consulting fees fell 10.89% to RMB 6.49 billion ($946 million), although this income stream extends beyond conventional advisory work. CCB is one of the few mega banks with a sizeable construction cost consulting business. Han said, “Cost consulting is a distinctive business unique to CCB. In recent years, its service coverage has continued to expand, its capabilities have deepened, and its functional role and value-creation capacity have steadily increased.” Advisory and consulting fees still accounted for 5.63% of net non-interest income, above the 4.33% mega bank average. Other net non-interest income rose 50.35% to RMB 51.09 billion ($7.44 billion), driven chiefly by gains on investment securities and the derecognition of amortised-cost assets. This reflected more active bond portfolio management and indicated that the increase extended beyond an isolated one-off gain. Ji Zhihong, Executive Director, Deputy President and Secretary to the Board of CCB, described the approach as “seizing three key opportunities”. The bank added medium- and long-term interest-rate bonds when yields rose in the first quarter, optimised its holdings through secondary-market transactions when prices rose in the second quarter and adjusted its strategy as the yield curve shifted. Ji said, “The profitability of our bond business continued to improve, further strengthening the foundation of the group’s overall performance.” This reflects CCB’s “four integrations” across commercial and investment banking, corporate and personal banking, domestic and foreign currencies and group-wide operations, delivered through bundled solutions. In technology finance, CCB underwrote 85 technology innovation bond issues worth RMB 48.77 billion ($7.11 billion), alongside double-digit growth in technology-related loans. Outstanding merger and acquisition loans reached RMB 287.94 billion by the end of June. On the balance sheet, financial investments rose 8.48% to RMB 13.99 trillion ($2.06 trillion), outpacing the 5.65% growth in loans and increasing their share of total assets by 1.30 percentage points to 29.56%. Their average yield fell from 2.89% to 2.57%, a steeper drop than the 28-basis-point decline in loan yields. Growth was therefore driven mainly by a 20.27% expansion in the average balance, not by pricing. Asset and liability optimisation supports NIM stabilisation Group NIM rose to 1.37% in the first half of 2026, three basis points above its full-year 2025 level. Second-quarter NIM improved to 1.38% from 1.36% in the first quarter, marking a second consecutive quarter of sequential improvement. The net interest spread, excluding non-interest-bearing funds, rose from 1.24% to 1.26%. Zhang described this as “achieving a sound balance across volume, pricing, risk and structure”. The RMB 24.25 billion ($3.53 billion) increase in net interest income came mainly from volume. The volume effect alone added RMB 25.50 billion, while the impact of interest-rate movements was broadly neutral. The RMB 60.19 billion ($8.77 billion) reduction resulting from lower asset yields was almost fully offset by RMB 58.94 billion ($8.59 billion) in savings from lower funding costs. Loans grew 5.65% to RMB 29.34 trillion ($4.32 trillion), while financial investments increased 8.48% to RMB 13.99 trillion ($2.06 trillion). This raised the share of core interest-earning assets from 88.17% in the first half of 2024 to 90.03% in the first half of 2026 (Figure 4), above the 89.2% mega bank average. New lending was directed toward higher-yielding, policy-supported sectors, led by manufacturing, where loans increased 17.95%, and personal consumption loans, which rose 14.59%. Both substantially outpaced the 5.65% growth in total loans. On the liability side, the cost of domestic deposits fell 29 basis points year on year to 1.08%, led by the repricing of maturing time deposits, whose cost declined 34 basis points from beginning of the year, to 1.66%. CCB’s CASA ratio stood at 40.35% at the end of June, down from 41.26% and 42.72% in the two preceding years. However, it remained well above the 36.4% mega bank average throughout the period. The bank attributed this advantage to its payroll services, social security card franchise, merchant acquiring business and payment networks. Tang Shuo, Deputy President of CCB, who oversees retail liabilities, said the bank was pursuing “coordinated development across the volume, pricing and quality of its liability business”. The strategy centres on deepening CCB’s role as customers’ primary bank for settlement, investment and financing. Zhang outlined a “two stabilisations and two optimisations” strategy for the second half of 2026. The bank plans to stabilise overall asset and liability growth and the pace of deployment, while optimising the asset mix toward technology, infrastructure and manufacturing and expanding its cash management and payroll platforms. AI, cost management and risk controls convert growth into returns Operating expenses rose 3.62% to RMB 98.96 billion ($14.42 billion), well below the 10.48% growth in operating income. This reduced the cost-to-income ratio (CIR) by 1.55 percentage points to 22.17%, well below the 29% mega bank average . This cost discipline did not come at the expense of investment. Other operating expenses rose 7.13%, while staff costs increased 4.48% to RMB 60.38 billion ($8.80 billion). AI supports this cost discipline. CCB launched a three-year “AI Plus” plan during the first half. By the end of June, generative AI covered more than 600 use cases across the bank, driving AI-assisted coding contribution up 50% compared to 2025. Lei Ming, Executive Vice President of CCB overseeing technology, highlighted Bangde, an AI assistant for relationship managers. Lei said relationship managers who used Bangde more effectively “recorded growth in the customer assets under their management that was 57 percentage points above the bank-wide average”. He described a closed loop in which staff “assign tasks conversationally and receive results through a one-stop process”. CCB’s non-performing loan (NPL) ratio fell two basis points to 1.29% (Figure 7), while the industry average remained volatile. Its provision coverage ratio rose 5.54 percentage points to 238.69%. Li Jianjiang, Deputy President and Chief Risk Officer of CCB, said the bank’s strategy was to “strengthen bottom-line and worst-case thinking, improve the quality of new lending and maintain control over existing exposures”. The improvement was concentrated in corporate lending. The NPL ratio for manufacturing loans fell from 1.44% to 1.33%, while retail asset quality softened slightly, with the personal loan NPL ratio rising from 1.19% to 1.31%. Capital remained strong. CCB reported a common equity Tier 1 ratio of 14.24%, a total capital adequacy ratio of 19.42% and a leverage ratio of 7.63%, all above the applicable regulatory minimums. The bank also issued RMB 150 billion ($21.85 billion) in perpetual, Tier 2 and total loss-absorbing capacity bonds. Return on average assets declined from 0.77% to 0.74%, while weighted average return on equity fell from 10.08% to 9.52%. However, CCB’s ROE decline was smaller than the mega bank average. A clear inflection point CCB’s improved profitability in the first half of 2026 rested on several factors. Asset and liability optimisation supported net interest income, wealth management, payments, custody and bond activity increased non-interest income and cost and risk discipline converted growth into profit more effectively. Both operating income and net profit grew faster than the mega bank averages, NIM improved for a second consecutive quarter and CIR remained among the best in the peer group. In the second half, CCB will continue its “two stabilisations and two optimisations” strategy while growing earnings from wealth management, consumer finance, payments and investment banking. As higher-cost deposits continue to reprice and AI expands across operations and risk control, CCB is well placed to consolidate revenue growth, improve efficiency and maintain stable asset quality Contact details: China Construction Bank https://en.ccb.com/
