More Than a Dozen Banks Successively List Non-Performing Assets for Transfer

Since March, more than a dozen banks, including Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Postal Savings Bank, Ping An Bank, Ningbo Bank, and Zhongyuan Bank, have listed non-performing asset packages. In terms of disposal scale, the total principal and interest of non-performing loans that multiple banks plan to transfer have reached hundreds of millions of yuan.

Data from the Credit Asset Registration and Circulation Center of the banking industry shows that both state-owned large banks and small- and medium-sized banks have joined this batch disposal of non-performing assets, with overall disposal efforts continuing to intensify.

On March 11, China Construction Bank issued ten notices for the transfer of non-performing loans, involving branches in Zhejiang Province, Henan Province, Jiangsu Province, and others. Among them, the Zhejiang branch’s third phase of personal non-performing assets had a total principal and interest of 276 million yuan, with individual batch sizes of 33 million yuan, 94 million yuan, and 149 million yuan.

On March 13, China Construction Bank launched another batch transfer of non-performing assets. The targets mainly involved personal consumer loans and personal business loans, covering multiple branches, with the total principal and interest of the unpaid amounts for each branch being 59 million yuan, 86 million yuan, 145 million yuan, 127 million yuan, 22 million yuan, and 106 million yuan, respectively.

Small- and medium-sized banks also issued related announcements. Ningbo Bank plans to transfer personal consumer loan non-performing projects with an outstanding principal and interest totaling 278 million yuan, with an average overdue period of 245 days; Huaxia Bank Beijing Branch announced that it intends to transfer personal consumer loan claims worth 824 million yuan, with an average overdue period of 613 days.

Gao Zhengyang, a special researcher at the Shanghai Finance and Law Research Institute, told Securities Daily that the reason why personal consumer loans and personal business loans have become the core categories for this concentrated disposal is due to the rapid expansion of retail lending in recent years. Personal consumer loans and personal business loans have become key drivers of bank business growth, with loan balances continuously increasing. At the same time, these loans are mostly credit loans lacking collateral to mitigate risks.

Gao Zhengyang stated that the banks’ intensive listing of non-performing asset packages reflects their proactive efforts to strengthen asset quality management and accelerate risk clearance. On one hand, the rapid expansion of personal consumer and business loans in the early stages has led to an increase in non-performing rates, prompting banks to intensify efforts to clean up such problematic assets. On the other hand, regulatory authorities continue to promote banks to improve the efficiency of non-performing asset disposal, with policy support opening channels for concentrated disposal—such as extending non-performing loan transfer pilot programs until the end of 2026 and temporarily waiving listing service fees, effectively reducing disposal costs for banks.

Regarding the impact, Gao Zhengyang believes that for banks, transferring non-performing assets through market-based methods can accelerate risk clearance, improve asset quality indicators, reduce non-performing loan ratios and provisioning pressures, and enhance the stability of the balance sheet. It can also reduce capital occupation and free up credit resources to support more dynamic sectors. From the perspective of the entire financial system, having professional institutions acquire and dispose of non-performing assets can improve overall industry disposal efficiency and promote the development of a more complete non-performing asset market ecosystem.

Yang Haiping, a researcher at the Shanghai Finance and Law Research Institute, predicts that non-performing asset disposal will become a routine operation in the banking industry. On one hand, personal consumer loans and personal business loans are expected to continue growing rapidly; on the other hand, regulatory requirements for non-performing loans are becoming more stringent.

Gao Zhengyang further stated that, looking at industry development trends, the disposal of non-performing assets is expected to gradually normalize. With the long-term implementation of non-performing loan transfer pilot policies and the gradual maturity of transfer mechanisms, non-performing asset transfers will become a routine liquidity management tool for banks. In the future, banks may move away from ad hoc disposal modes toward more steady, normalized supply patterns; the composition and methods of disposal will become more diversified, with technological upgrades in disposal approaches. Pricing mechanisms built on big data will become more refined and precise, continuously improving industry disposal efficiency.