CM BANK recently held its "2026 Wealth Partner Forum" in Guangzhou, themed "Riding the Pearl River Tide, Writing a New Chapter in Wealth," where it announced that its retail assets under management (AUM) have surpassed ¥18 trillion. Simultaneously, the bank unveiled its new AI agent, "AI Companion," for the first time. President Wang Xiaoqing systematically outlined CM BANK's strategic direction for wealth management using the "Five Betters" framework, signaling a shift from "selling products" to "building an ecosystem" and from "human + digital" to "human + Agent."
The bank officially declared that its retail AUM had exceeded ¥18 trillion, marking an increase of over ¥2 trillion compared to the same period last year. This milestone comes just one year after CM BANK announced in August 2025 that its AUM had surpassed ¥16 trillion, showcasing another rapid leap forward. To understand the significance of this ¥18 trillion figure, it is helpful to place it within CM BANK's recent performance trajectory. At the end of 2024, the bank's retail AUM stood at ¥14.93 trillion; by the end of 2025, it had surged to ¥17.08 trillion, with an annual increase of over ¥2 trillion. By the end of the first quarter of 2026, AUM had further grown to approximately ¥17.86 trillion, adding ¥772.646 billion in a single quarter. The "¥18 trillion breakthrough" announced at the forum represents an additional ¥1 trillion increase from the end of 2025. Over the past year and a half, total AUM has grown by more than ¥3 trillion.
Even more noteworthy is the shift in revenue composition behind this AUM growth. In 2025, CM BANK's wealth management fee and commission income reached ¥26.711 billion, a year-on-year increase of 21.39%. This included ¥5.846 billion in agency fund income, which skyrocketed by 40.36%, and ¥3.518 billion in agency trust plan income, up 65.55%. In the first quarter of 2026, wealth management fee and commission income hit ¥8.507 billion, a robust 25.42% year-on-year increase, with agency fund income surging by 55.11%. The macroeconomic backdrop for these figures is one of persistent pressure on banks' net interest margins and a diminishing impact of traditional credit-driven models. In 2025, CM BANK's retail financial business contributed over 50% to both revenue and profit, with wealth management emerging as a key variable to offset income pressure from interest rates. In other words, the ¥18 trillion in AUM is not just a number; it represents the bank's second growth curve forged on the path of "asset-light" transformation.
Supporting this ¥18 trillion AUM is CM BANK's massive customer base. As of the end of the first quarter of 2026, the bank had 227 million retail customers, a 1.34% increase from the end of the previous year. As of the end of June 2025, the number of "Golden Sunflower" and above clients had reached 5.6323 million, up 7.57% from the end of 2024. Two key characteristics of the customer structure are particularly notable: private banking clients are approaching 200,000, with double-digit growth rates, and the growth rate of high-value "Golden Sunflower" and above clients is significantly higher than the overall customer growth rate. This suggests that the quality of AUM growth is high, moving beyond simple "deposit shifting." In 2025, the outstanding premium for CM BANK's retail agency insurance products surpassed ¥1 trillion. Combined with the diversified allocation of AUM across wealth management products, funds, and trusts, this reflects a trend of residents shifting from single-deposit assets to diversified portfolios.
Service Model Evolves to "Human + Agent"
Another focal point of the forum was the launch of "AI Companion," a new AI agent designed for CM BANK's wealth partners. Its unique positioning sets it apart: unlike "Xiao Zhao," which serves C-end customers, or "Xiao Zhu," which assists internal employees, "AI Companion" specifically empowers external asset management partners. With all three working together, CM BANK has built a retail intelligent application matrix covering C-end, B-end, and internal operations. The service model has officially transitioned from "human + digital" to "human + Agent." "AI Companion" possesses six core capabilities: investment research collaboration, creative design, intelligent construction, activity configuration, audit and error correction, and data analysis. This indicates that CM BANK's AI investments are no longer limited to front-end customer interactions or internal efficiency improvements. Instead, the bank is now outputting its intelligent capabilities to partners across the entire value chain, breaking down data and process silos between channels, investment research, and product operations.
Looking back at the timeline of CM BANK's AI deployment: it launched the intelligent wealth assistant "AI Xiao Zhao" in 2021, and in May 2025, it released an open-source, hundred-billion-parameter financial large language model, becoming one of the first commercial banks in China to do so. In 2025, it fully promoted the construction and application of AI, establishing an "AI-First" strategic direction. Today, the "Xiao Zhao + Xiao Zhu + AI Companion" trinity marks the upgrade of CM BANK's retail intelligence from a single-point tool to an ecosystem-level infrastructure. During the forum, President Wang Xiaoqing clearly stated that the scale of data calls and scenario empowerment within CM BANK's AI system has reached a "very high level," and the bank is continuing to increase investment, iterate models, optimize scenarios, and connect the ecosystem. Against the backdrop of the wealth management industry's widespread struggle with homogeneous customer acquisition and commission-based competition, using AI to reduce the cost of ecosystem collaboration and enhance the professional density of asset allocation services is a key move for CM BANK to build a differentiated competitive advantage.
What the Next Phase of Wealth Management Will Be About
For a long time, the wealth business of banks has been prone to path dependency: relying on large customer bases to distribute products and earn fees. However, this model has significant weaknesses during market fluctuations: customers incur losses during downturns, channel reputation suffers, and institutions easily fall into short-term games. Wang Xiaoqing's "Five Betters" framework—being more open, more focused, more professional, warmer, and more comprehensive—is essentially a correction of this path dependency. Breaking it down: being "more open" means sharing scenarios, data, and customer operations capabilities with asset management institutions, breaking down closed channel thinking. Being "more focused" prioritizes customer expectation management and long-term companionship over short-term marketing goals. Being "more professional" involves continuously refining asset allocation, product selection, and investment research collaboration capabilities to navigate cycles with expertise. Being "warmer" entails providing full-cycle customer companionship, including emotional and expectation support. Being "more comprehensive" means fostering broader cooperation across the entire financial spectrum to connect underlying assets with the real economy.
Standing at this new starting point, CM BANK's retail business still faces several propositions that require ongoing validation. First is the dynamic optimization of the AUM structure. In a low-interest-rate, low-yield environment, how to balance customer returns with institutional profitability for a vast pool of existing assets, and how to guide customers from "fixed-income dependency" to "diversified allocation," will test the bank's investment research and product selection capabilities. Second is the ROI conversion of AI investments. The large-scale application of "AI Companion," "Xiao Zhao," and "Xiao Zhu" needs to translate into measurable improvements in customer experience and partner collaboration efficiency to avoid technology investments becoming mere marketing concepts. This requires time to prove. Third is the rebalancing of ecosystem interests. Between CM BANK and its 80 top-tier institutional partners, how to balance the interests of channels, customers, and partners to truly achieve "symbiosis rather than short-term game-playing" is the key to the successful implementation of the "Five Betters."
Furthermore, another side of CM BANK's retail business cannot be ignored: its credit card loan balance was ¥938.991 billion at the end of 2025, which contracted to ¥900.417 billion by the end of the first quarter of 2026, while the non-performing loan ratio rose from 1.74% to 1.90%. While the wealth management business is "basking in the spring breeze," the credit card business is still in a "late spring cold snap." This implies that the high growth in AUM is, to some extent, also filling the pressure from other retail business lines. At a time when peers, internet platforms, and securities firms are all vying for wealth clients, the dividends from relying solely on branch networks and app traffic have plateaued. CM BANK's choice is to hold the fort of its ¥18 trillion AUM customer base, use AI agents to lower collaboration costs with partners, and rebuild customer trust in the wealth management industry through long-term service.