China's Bank Wealth Management Disclosure Rules Take Effect as Industry Reaches RMB 33.66 Trillion

As of the end of June 2026, the outstanding scale of bank wealth management products stood at RMB 33.66 trillion. With the implementation of the Measures for the Administration of Information Disclosure of Asset Management Products of Banking and Insurance Institutions, the previous practice by wealth management institutions of selectively disclosing performance at favorable times and reporting only good news has been blocked, and the industry has officially entered an era of transparent disclosure.

Testing on September 10 found that wealth management institutions have completed rectification in core trading channels such as bank apps, but information disclosure in marketing materials such as WeChat official account promotional articles and posters still shows inconsistencies. Some institutions still display numerical performance benchmarks in WeChat articles. Even within the same article, different products promoted by the same institution use inconsistent historical performance metrics: some show annualized return since inception and one-month annualized return, while others show annualized return since inception and three-month annualized return.

Surveys of multiple wealth management companies show that for these institutions, disclosure reform is not just a back-office technical system upgrade but will also profoundly reshape product design and customer management logic. Wu Peng, assistant general manager of the product department at a city commercial bank wealth management company, said that adjusting performance benchmarks used to be relatively easy, but now the process is cumbersome. The regulatory direction is clear: guiding wealth management companies not to blindly compete on performance benchmarks.

According to the WeChat official account of China Wealth Management Network, the China Wealth Management Network unified industry information disclosure platform has been officially launched. All 32 wealth management companies, 141 banking institutions with outstanding public wealth management products, and 41 institutions engaged in wealth management product custody business have connected to the platform and are conducting information disclosure. On the day the platform fully launched, nearly 7,000 announcements and nearly 60,000 data items such as net values were disclosed.

After the full implementation of the new asset management rules, bank wealth management completed its net-value transformation, but the chronic problem of selective information disclosure has plagued the industry. In the past, wealth management institutions could select the period with the best performance for external display; performance benchmarks were mostly fixed percentage figures, easily misinterpreted by ordinary investors as guaranteed returns. The Measures directly address industry pain points and set hard standards for institutional information disclosure.

Wu Peng said that after the implementation of the Measures, the internal approval and external disclosure processes for adjusting product performance benchmarks have become cumbersome. Previously, some institutions gained a competitive advantage in marketing by raising performance benchmark figures. However, against the backdrop of persistently declining asset yields, it is difficult to support high performance benchmarks solely through fixed-income assets.

Interviews with product department personnel at multiple wealth management companies revealed that to meet the requirements of the Measures, the industry has concentrated on system upgrades, with most institutions completing upgrades to internal valuation, performance calculation, and information disclosure reporting systems by the end of August. Wu Peng said that in late August, the company was intensively adjusting the performance benchmarks of its wealth management products, and products not yet in their open period would also be adjusted in the coming months.

The survey found that there are variations in the implementation of the Measures, with some wealth management institutions still using numerical performance benchmarks on channels such as WeChat official accounts.

On direct trading portals such as bank apps and proprietary apps, most wealth management institutions have displayed indexed performance benchmarks, complete fiscal-year performance, and annualized returns for the past one, three, six, and twelve months in accordance with regulatory requirements, with complete disclosure elements. However, in marketing materials such as WeChat articles and long images forwarded by client managers, some label products with annualized return since inception, some with annualized return since inception and each complete fiscal year return, and some with annualized return since inception, each complete fiscal year return, and six-month or three-month annualized return.

According to the Semi-Annual Report on China's Banking Wealth Management Market (First Half of 2026), as of the end of June 2026, the outstanding scale of the bank wealth management market was RMB 33.66 trillion, up 1.11% from the beginning of the year. In the first half, 18,200 new wealth management products were issued, raising RMB 39.21 trillion, creating RMB 305.2 billion in returns for investors; through investments in bonds, non-standardized credit assets, and equity assets, wealth management products supported about RMB 21 trillion in real economy funding; the number of investors holding wealth management products reached 151 million, up 5.59% from the beginning of the year.

Transparent information disclosure is an important institutional infrastructure for the second half of the net-value transformation of bank wealth management. When the path of selectively beautifying performance is blocked by technology and rules, the true medium- and long-term performance and drawdown control capabilities of products will be directly exposed to investors, and the focus of competition among wealth management institutions will shift to investment research strength, portfolio management, and risk control capabilities.

A person from a wealth management company of a large state-owned bank said that the industry is now most concerned with how to improve product returns on the investment side. Underlying asset yields are very low, and the traditional model of relying on high-coupon assets to enhance returns is no longer sustainable. Some past operations to smooth net value fluctuations have also been restricted by regulators. The industry is generally shifting to multi-asset, multi-strategy, and equity-enhanced investment paths, trying to find a balance between return enhancement and drawdown control.

People from multiple wealth management companies said that regulators do not encourage rapid scale growth. Simply expanding scale is no longer a core plus for the industry. But in reality, wealth management companies still face internal performance assessments from their parent banks, with pressure on revenue, profit, and customer numbers. The industry generally pursues steady growth under compliance rather than blindly chasing scale.

The Interim Measures for Regulatory Rating of Wealth Management Companies issued in 2026 specify that regulatory ratings include six elements: corporate governance, asset management capability, risk management, information disclosure, investor rights protection, and information technology, with indicators divided into qualitative and quantitative categories. Among them, asset management capability and risk management together carry a weight of 50%. The key to industry competition is shifting from scale to asset allocation, risk pricing, and customer suitability, with the core focusing on investment research capabilities, risk control levels, and differentiated product design.