Judging from the latest financial reports, in the first half of this year, the liabilities of major banks remained “standard” with the total personal deposit balances of 13 major commercial banks reaching 11.207 trillion yuan, an increase of 11.9 trillion yuan year-on-year, with significant growth in ICBC, Agricultural Bank of China and others. At the same time, the tendency of “moving” to divert to the wealth management market is slightly “prominent”, and many banks’ wealth management business revenue increased significantly in the first half of the year.

First Financial News also noticed that the trend of deposit periodization in the first half of the year still exists. However, the industry believes that as deposit interest rates continue to decline and fixed deposits are concentrated on maturity and repricing, the cost of banks’ liabilities is expected to improve significantly.

Despite this, most banks still have pressure on net interest margins. According to data from the State Administration for Financial Supervision, the net interest margin of commercial banks continued to narrow month-on-month in the second quarter of 2025, falling to 1.42%. At the recent interim performance conference, many major banks mentioned that it was mainly affected by factors such as the reduction of LPR (loan market quotation interest rate) and the adjustment of existing mortgage interest rates.

Is bank deposits “diversion”?

In its research report, China Galaxy Securities Research Institute stated that deposit moving is the process by which residents transfer bank deposits to other assets. Therefore, one must first see the decline in deposits, and the other must see the deposit flow to other assets.

In the first half of this year, have the deposits of major domestic banks decreased? There was no obvious signal in the financial report.

First Financial Daily has counted the data of 13 major domestic commercial banks, including 6 large state-owned banks and 7 joint-stock banks including China Merchants Bank. At the end of the first half of the year, the total deposit balances of the above 13 banks were 187.4 trillion yuan, an increase of 13.78 trillion yuan year-on-year. This is an increase of 7.46 trillion yuan compared with the same period last year. Among them, the total personal deposit balance was 112.07 trillion yuan, an increase of 11.9 trillion yuan year-on-year, an increase of 2.69 trillion yuan from the same period last year.

Among them, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has the largest increase in personal deposit balance. The financial report shows that as of the end of the first half of 2025, the personal deposit balance of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was 19.83 trillion yuan, an increase of 2.31 trillion yuan year-on-year. The second is Agricultural Bank of China, with the personal deposit balance of 20.16 trillion yuan, an increase of 2.3 trillion yuan year-on-year. In addition, the personal deposit balances of China Construction Bank, Bank of China and Postal Savings Bank have increased by more than 1 trillion yuan.

However, as we enter the second half of the year, the turning point in the deposit scale seems to have begun to appear. Financial data released by the central bank in July showed that the new deposits of the residents’ sector decreased by 1.1 trillion yuan in that month, while deposits of non-bank institutions increased by 2.14 trillion yuan.