Chinese banks' wealth management business growth decelerates in 2017

BEIJING - Growth in the wealth management business at Chinese banks lost steam in 2017 amid tightened regulations to contain financial risks.

The balance of wealth management products stood at 29.54 trillion yuan ($4.69 trillion) by the end of 2017, up 1.69 percent, down by 21.94 percentage points compared with 2016, according to a report by an industrial body that tracks the sector.

Among them, financial inter-bank wealth management products, a high-leverage business, saw their balance plummet by over 50 percent year-on-year. Their share among all wealth products fell by 11.88 percentage points.

Financial institutions in the banking sector sold new wealth management products worth 173.59 trillion yuan last year, with about 83.25 percent of them being medium-and-low-level-risk products.

Wealth management products targeting individual customers were the key propeller of the sector's growth last year, growing over 27.4 percent year-on-year.

China's top banking regulator has introduced a string of regulations to deleverage the sector and defuse financial risks in the past year.