While the banking sector broadly faces challenges from a shortage of quality assets and narrowing interest margins, Bank of Chongqing has delivered a set of impressive financial figures. In 2025, the bank's total assets crossed the trillion-yuan threshold, reaching 1.03 trillion yuan, an increase of over 20% year-on-year. By the first quarter of 2026, this figure had further climbed to 1.11 trillion yuan. Alongside this expansion, both operating revenue and net profit attributable to shareholders maintained double-digit growth rates, showcasing a notable counter-cyclical expansion momentum among city commercial banks.
However, a closer examination of the financial report reveals that the bank's growth is not driven by structural transformation breakthroughs. The increase in net interest income served as the primary engine for its strong performance. In 2025, Bank of Chongqing's net interest margin rose against the trend by 4 basis points, significantly boosting net interest income. However, against the backdrop of declining Loan Prime Rates, this expansion did not stem from pricing premiums on the asset side. Data shows that the average yield on the bank's interest-earning assets actually fell by 27 basis points in 2025. The widening interest margin was attributed to a reduction in liability-side costs, with the average cost rate of interest-bearing liabilities decreasing by 40 basis points. This reflects the bank's capture of temporary benefits by squeezing liability costs during the deposit repricing cycle.
Regarding asset quality, Bank of Chongqing presents a complex divergence. Superficially, the non-performing loan ratio continued to decline, falling from 1.25% in 2024 to 1.12% in Q1 2026. However, significant pressure on risk exposure remains in specific segments. In 2025, its NPL ratio for the real estate sector rose to 7.75%, and the NPL ratio for retail loans also climbed to 3.23%. The decline in the overall NPL ratio is primarily due to a "denominator effect": through rapid corporate loan expansion exceeding 30%, the bank mathematically diluted existing risks. This strategy of "diluting存量风险 with增量" is also reflected in the income statement. In both 2025 and Q1 2026, the bank's credit impairment losses increased significantly, indicating that management is using profit retention from scale expansion to hedge against actual bad debt pressures emerging from the real estate and retail sectors.
An imbalance in business structure is another facet behind the trillion-yuan scale. At a time when the entire industry is advocating for a "retail transformation," Bank of Chongqing's credit resources remain heavily skewed towards the corporate sector. In 2025, its corporate loan balance exceeded 400 billion yuan, while retail loans experienced negative growth. Concurrently, due to the contraction of intermediary businesses such as wealth management agency services, net fee and commission income saw consecutive declines of over 30%. This indicates that Bank of Chongqing has encountered bottlenecks in developing its capital-light business narrative, with its operational essence reverting to a traditional, asset-heavy path: acting as a leveraged channel for regional infrastructure and government-related projects.
The logic driven by heavy assets inevitably leads to rapid capital consumption. By the end of 2025, Bank of Chongqing's core tier 1 capital adequacy ratio significantly decreased from 9.88% to 8.53%, a level that represents a tight balance among its peers. Even with subsequent profit retention as a supplement, its capital buffer remains thin. Capital constraints have become a tightening "curse" restricting its ability to maintain rapid expansion. Currently, a substantial portion of the bank's 13 billion yuan "Chongyin Convertible Bonds" remains unconverted. With core capital under pressure, whether the bank can guide bondholders to convert through market value management, thereby achieving external capital replenishment, will determine if this "expansion machine" will be forced to decelerate due to depleted momentum.
In summary, Bank of Chongqing's path to a trillion yuan in assets leveraged temporary liability cost advantages, achieving superficial prosperity through corporate balance sheet expansion. However, the hidden leverage inherent in this approach warrants attention. When the liability-side benefits are exhausted, real estate sector risks remain unresolved, and capital replenishment faces challenges, the sustainability of this high-growth model will face its true test.