The net interest income of listed banks in 2025 shows a significant improvement, with some growth rates turning positive.

【Global Times Finance News (Composite Report)】As the pace of net interest margin narrowing slows, net interest income—which is a core component of bank revenue—will see an improvement in 2025, with multiple listed banks’ indicators turning from negative to positive.

Oriental IC

Looking further, China Merchants Bank recorded year-over-year declines in net interest income of 1.63% in 2023 and 1.58% in 2024, corresponding to year-over-year declines in operating income of 1.64% and 0.48% in those years, respectively. In 2025, the bank’s net interest income increased by 2.04% year over year compared with the same period the previous year; meanwhile, non-interest net income fell by 3.38% year over year, and full-year operating income achieved a marginal positive growth of 0.01%.

In addition, in 2025, Pudong Development Bank and Chongqing Bank also registered positive growth in net interest income, at 5.03% and 22.44%, respectively. In 2024, the two banks recorded year-over-year declines in net interest income of 3.14% and 2.59%, respectively.

As for the performance of state-owned major banks, except for Bank of Communications, the other five state-owned major banks all saw negative growth in net interest income in 2025, and their share of revenue also fell year over year. The main support for positive revenue growth came from bond investment income and income from intermediary services. However, signs of marginal improvement have emerged: the pace of negative growth for Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Bank of China, and Postal Savings Bank of China all slowed compared with 2024.

What deserves attention is that, although banks’ net interest margins are still narrowing, the rate of decline has clearly moderated. For example, in 2025, China Construction Bank’s net interest margin was 1.34%, with the year-over-year decline narrowing by 2 basis points, and the quarterly decline also showed a marginally narrowing trend.

Regarding the above changes, during an industry earnings briefing, Chen Liurong, Chief Financial Officer of China Construction Bank, said that the narrowing of the bank’s marginal decline is attributable to three factors: first, the repricing of existing loans has gradually been completed, easing downward pressure on loan yield; second, time deposits with relatively higher interest payment rates are concentrated in maturity, leading to a sharp drop in the interest cost rate of general deposits, which, to a certain extent, offsets and mitigates the impact of the decline in loan yield on net interest margin; third, it has carried out effective proactive asset-liability management—on the asset side, it further increased the proportion of financial investments with relatively higher yields in interest-earning assets; on the liability side, it stepped up expansion of general demand deposits and low-cost financial interbank demand deposits, while reducing high-cost deposits.