① Bank of Qingdao's net interest spread increased month-on-month last year, making it the only case among A-share listed banks so far. ② The bank's senior management said that in 2023, the share of personal loans, especially consumer loans and operating loans, will be moderately increased on the premise that risks are manageable, and that they will strive to maintain a relatively stable interest rate on the asset-side. ③ At the same time, increase marketing efforts for low-cost settlement deposits and reduce the share of high-cost deposits.
Financial Services Association, April 12 (Reporter Liang Kezhi) On April 11, Bank of Qingdao held a results conference. The data showed that the bank's net interest spread as of the end of 2023 was 1.83%, up 0.07 percentage points from the end of the previous year. The net spread was 1.85%, the same as the end of the previous year.
Compared with the listed banks that have published their annual reports, which have complained about the decline in interest spreads, the Bank of Qingdao's net interest spread rose sequentially last year, making it the only case for A-share listed banks so far.
At the press conference, Bank of Qingdao management said that the change in net interest spreads is mainly due to the optimization of the balance, liability, revenue structure, and business structure adjustments. Multi-channel customer acquisition helped increase the share of retail deposits by 5.65 percentage points, reduce the average cost ratio of interest-bearing debt, etc.
In April 2023, the Haitong International report showed that since 2020, the Bank of Qingdao's net interest spread has remained at the 2% level. According to the 2022 data, the Bank of Qingdao's net interest spread was 1.76%, stable from month to month, mainly reducing debt costs through sources other than deposits.
In terms of revenue, in 2023, Bank of Qingdao achieved operating income of 12.472 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.11%, and realized net profit to mother of 3,549 billion yuan, an increase of 15.11% over the previous year; the weighted average return on net assets reached 10.71%, an increase of 1.76 percentage points over the previous year.
Furthermore, the revenue of its financial leasing and financial management subsidiaries increased their contribution to the Group's revenue. The Bank of Qingdao stated that “light capital income is gradually increasing, and the scale and share of revenue collection continues to increase.”
According to the data, the Bank of Qingdao achieved net revenue of 1,587 billion yuan in handling fees and commissions last year, an increase of 9.78%. In addition, the profit of Qingdao Golden Rental was 251 million, an increase of 44.9%, and the financial processing fee for Qingdao was 930 million yuan, an increase of 8.2%.
A Financial Services Association reporter noticed that in terms of customer expansion, Bank of Qingdao had 8.944,600 retail customers last year, an increase of 16.02%; the number of company customers was 245,500, an increase of 18.66%, and the company's loan balance (including bill discounts and no accrued interest) reached 221,006 billion yuan, an increase of 12.96% over last year.
Meanwhile, in 2023, the scale of the Bank of Qingdao's own investment increased by 11.52%, of which the scale of bond investment increased by 12.63%.
On April 11, Li Zhenguo, general manager of the Bank of Qingdao's planning and finance department, said at the 2023 annual performance briefing that the Bank of Qingdao's net interest spread is mainly due to the bank actively optimizing its balance and liability structure, continuously increasing investment in high-yield assets, and actively reducing high-cost liabilities.
Li Zhenguo explained that the Bank of Qingdao's average yield on interest-bearing assets last year was 4.17%, down 5 bps from the end of the previous year. In the context of the policy of fee reduction and concessions, interest rates on loans and financial investments continued to decline, but by optimizing the asset structure, increasing loan investment, and increasing the share of loans, the overall yield on interest-bearing assets fell only slightly by 5 bps, and the average cost of interest-paying debt was 2.32%, down 5 bps from the end of the previous year.
However, projects with a change of more than 30% in the 2023 annual report showed that Bank of Qingdao's handling fees and commission expenses reached 526 million yuan, an increase of 52.1% over the previous year; exchange gains and losses were -155 million yuan, down 121.12% from the previous year; in terms of investment income, 2023 was 1,286 million yuan, down from 2,386 million last year.
It is worth noting that the profit and loss from changes in fair value was $323 million, a significant increase of 124.37% compared to -13.268 million in 2022.
Looking ahead to 2024, Li Zhenguo said that on the one hand, the Bank of Qingdao will continue to adjust its asset structure, improve the efficiency of capital use, increase loan investment, increase the share of loans, moderately increase the share of personal loans, especially consumer loans and operating loans, on the premise that risks are manageable, and strive to maintain a relatively stable asset-side interest rate.
On the other hand, it actively optimizes and adjusts the debt structure, insists on “deposit placement,” increases marketing efforts for low-cost settlement deposits, and reduces the share of high-cost deposits. At the same time, deposit interest rates are moderately reduced in due course with the help of market-based deposit interest rate adjustment mechanisms, and debt costs are kept within a reasonable range.