CICC has released a research report stating that in the first half of 2026, mainland residents experienced both a "deposit migration" and "deleveraging" trend simultaneously, with household deposits increasing by a net 7.6 trillion RMB, a year-on-year decline of 3.2 trillion RMB in incremental terms, marking the largest shortfall in nearly a decade.

The firm has assigned an "Outperform" rating to CM BANK (03968), China Construction Bank (00939), and Bank of China (03988), with target prices of HK$60.49, HK$9.69, and HK$6.42 respectively.

The firm believes that residents' risk appetite has improved notably compared to the same period last year, but has remained broadly stable relative to the second half of 2025 without continuing to rise steeply. On the wealth management institution side, brokerages and third-party platforms have served clients' high-risk-appetite investment needs more extensively, achieving more elastic AUM and revenue growth.

The firm notes that in the first half, the large wealth management revenues of sample banks, brokerages, and platform institutions grew year-on-year by 7.6%, 48.7%, and 42.4% respectively. After excluding the impact of one-off gains related to legacy wealth management products, the firm estimates that banks' year-on-year growth rate was 16.6%, a slight decrease of 2.6 percentage points from the second half of last year, still maintaining double-digit growth.

At the end of the first half, the retail AUM of sample banks grew 10.2% year-on-year, while wealth AUM grew 17% year-on-year. Wealth products accounted for 57% of the incremental retail AUM, up 33 percentage points year-on-year. The firm estimates that the average comprehensive fee rate on wealth management client assets for three sample banks in the first half was 0.24%, rising approximately 3 basis points both year-on-year and compared to the second half of 2025.

In terms of client base, the number of private banking clients grew 15.2% year-on-year, faster than the 2.7% growth in retail clients of sample banks. Brokerage client numbers and custodial asset scale growth also outpaced banks. The firm also states that AI has become a capability-building direction commonly pursued by wealth management institutions.