【英语财经】中国小银行:利润飙升,但风险暗藏 Profits soar but risks lurk at China’s small banks

双语秀   2016-09-14 17:04   143   0  

2016-2-3 22:48

小艾摘要: China’s smaller banks are growing rapidly, bucking the flatlining trend of their larger peers, by aggressively expanding their balance sheets and piling on the risk being shunned by the big four.The ...
Profits soar but risks lurk at China’s small banks
China’s smaller banks are growing rapidly, bucking the flatlining trend of their larger peers, by aggressively expanding their balance sheets and piling on the risk being shunned by the big four.

The diverging paths of China’s lenders comes as interest-rate deregulation squeezes net interest margins and the slowing economy tips more borrowers into default: non-performing loans have more than doubled over the past two years, official figures show. Analysts widely believe the true scale of soured loans is even higher.

Yet while the bigger players are drawing in their horns, smaller rivals are taking the opportunity — and risk — of pushing out more loans.

Thus net income at the big five commercial banks was flat last year compared with growth of 6 per cent for listed midsized banks and 17 per cent for 10 city-level Chinese banks, according to data from Wind, a financial database. Most of the growth figures cover the first three quarters of the year.

The trajectory of new loans follows a similar path. Assets grew 15 per cent at the big five banks last year, compared with 18 per cent at midsized “joint-stock banks” banks and 25 per cent at city-level commercial banks, according to data from the bank regulator that includes unlisted lenders.

Even these figures understate the true gap in lending growth rates since small banks have been more aggressive in lending through off-balance-sheet channels. Such loans tend to flow to risky borrowers such as property developers, local government financing vehicles and manufacturers from overcapacity sectors. Income is reported as fees rather than interest.

“The shadow-bank exposures of small banks are definitely larger,” said Yuan Lin, bank analyst at BOC International in Beijing. “The risk hasn't been fully exposed yet.”

On the surface, smaller lenders have maintained higher asset quality than the mega banks. The big five had a combined NPL ratio of 1.59 per cent at the end of September, compared with 1.49 per cent for joint-stock banks and 1.44 per cent for city commercial banks.

But these figures conceal the extent of delinquencies at smaller banks. Faster loan growth in recent years has meant smaller banks issued new loans faster than older ones could turn sour, flattering the overall NPL ratio.

“When a loan is new, it’s unlikely to be non-performing. So for a bank whose loan book is growing very fast, it may report a very low NPL ratio,” said Qiang Liao, China banks analyst at rating agency Standard & Poor’s.

“As the loan portfolio ‘seasons’, that’s when NPLs start to appear.”

Based on the amount of provisions that banks set aside against current and future bad loans, analysts can calculate the implied probability that any particular loan will turn sour. Mr Liao estimates a credit-loss ratio of 1.2 per cent for smaller banks compared with 0.8 per cent for large banks.

Smaller banks are also expected to endure more pain from interest-rate deregulation than their larger rivals. Larger banks can rely on their huge retail branch networks to keep deposits flowing in and funding costs low. Smaller banks will be forced to offer higher deposit rates to draw in funds.

“Most city commercial banks will see their profitability weaken as a result of narrower net interest margins in a liberalised interest-rate environment,” Moody’s wrote in a December note.

The risk is that some banks will respond to higher funding costs by turning to higher-interest — and riskier — loans in order to earn bigger returns and maintain margins. That would better enable small businesses to access bank credit, but it would also add to default risk, especially in a slowing economy.

Finally, the long-awaited rollout of deposit insurance this year may provide an additional headwind for smaller banks.

The scheme is expected to protect 98 per cent of all depositors against any losses in the event that their bank goes bust. In theory, that should ensure peace of mind for those parking cash at a small lender.

But international experience shows that the opposite is often true. By explicitly defining a threshold above which deposits aren’t protected, deposit insurance tends to emphasise the possibility — however remote — that a bank failure could inflict losses on depositors. At least in the initial phase, this notion tends to push depositors towards larger banks viewed as safer.

This dynamic may be especially powerful in China, where the public has broadly assumed that all banks enjoy an explicit government guarantee. Deposit insurance could well push depositors towards the large, state-owned banks whose failure is still considered unthinkable, while scaring them away from city-level banks, many of which are privately owned.

Additional reporting by Ma Nan

中国较小银行正在迅猛增长,其势头超过了保持平稳的大银行。这些小银行的发展,源自它们激进地扩大资产负债表的规模,并不断积累被四大银行回避的风险。

就在中国各银行出现这种截然不同的发展势头之际,对利率管制的放开挤压了银行的净利差,而经济放缓也令更多贷款者出现了违约:官方数据显示,过去两年不良贷款增加了一倍以上。分析师广泛认为,中国不良贷款的真正规模还要更高。

不过,尽管大银行有所收敛,小银行却在抓住机遇——以及风险,发放更多贷款。

就这样,根据来自金融数据库Wind的数据,去年五大商业银行的净利润保持平稳,而上市中等规模银行的增幅则为6%,10家市级中资银行增幅则为17%。这些增长数据中,多数涵盖了去年头三个季度。



新增贷款的变化也出现了类似规律。根据来自银行监管机构的包括未上市银行在内的数据,去年五大银行的资产增长了15%,相比之下中型“股份制银行”的资产增幅为18%,市级商业银行资产增长了25%。

由于小银行在通过表外渠道放贷时一直更为激进,即便是上述数据,也低估了贷款增长速度的真正差距。这些贷款往往会流向房地产开发商、地方政府融资平台和产能过剩产业的制造商等高风险的借贷者。而相关的收入则被录为佣金而不是利息。

北京中银国际(BOC International)银行分析师袁琳表示:“小银行对影子银行的敞口无疑更高。这一风险目前还未完全暴露。”



表面上看,小银行保持住了比大银行更高的资产品质。9月底,五大银行总的不良贷款比率为1.59%,相比之下,股份制银行的不良贷款率为1.49%,而市级商业银行的不良贷款比例则为1.44%。

不过,这些数据掩盖了小银行不良行为的严重程度。最近几年贷款增长速度的加快,意味着小银行发放新贷款的增长速度超过了可能违约的旧贷款,从而令总体不良贷款率的数据看起来好看一些。

评级机构标准普尔(Standard & Poor's)中资银行分析师廖强表示:“新贷款不太可能是不良贷款。因此,对于放贷规模极快增长的银行来说,它可能录得极低的不良贷款率。”

“当贷款组合‘放上一段时间’,不良贷款率就开始显露出来了。”

根据银行防范当前和未来坏债的准备金的规模,分析师能算出任何特定贷款会成为坏债的隐含概率。廖强估计,小银行的信损率是1.2%,而大银行的信损率则是0.8%。

而利率去监管化预计也会令小银行比大银行承受更多痛苦。大银行可以依靠庞大的零售分行网,确保存款流入并压低资金成本。小银行则不得不提供更高的存款利率,以吸引资金。

穆迪(Moody's)在12月份的一份报告中写道:“受利率放开环境下净利差收窄的影响,多数市级商业银行将出现盈利能力下降。”

这其中的风险在于,为应对资金成本升高,部分银行将转向更高利率(风险也更高)的贷款,以获得更高的回报率并确保利润率不变。这会提高小企业获得银行信贷的机会,却也加大了违约风险——尤其是在经济放缓的局面下。

最后,期盼已久的存款保险制度在今年的逐步实施,也许会为小银行带来额外的困难。

该计划预计会在银行破产时,保护98%的存款人免受任何损失。理论上,这会让那些把现金存在小银行的人们安心。

然而,国际上的经验表明,事实往往与此相反。通过明确定义存款保护的上限,存款保险制度往往会突出银行破产会令存款者蒙受损失的可能性——不论这种可能性有多小。至少在该制度刚开始实施的阶段,这种信号往往会令投资者倾向于认为大银行更安全一些。

在公众普遍认定所有银行都享有政府明确担保的中国,这种影响尤为强烈。存款保险制度很可能会在把存款者从市级银行(这些银行中许多都由私人持有)吓跑的同时,将他们推向大型国有银行——这些银行的破产仍被认为是不可想象的。

Ma Nan补充报道

译者/简易

本文关键字:财经英语,小艾英语,双语网站,财经双语,财经资讯,互联网新闻,ERWAS,行业解析,创业指导,营销策略,英语学习,可以双语阅读的网站!