Ping An says mortgage refusals have minimal impact on its business

Recent cases of some homebuyers refusing to pay mortgages due to delayed deliveries or stalled construction of their presold homes have affected Ping An Bank's business, but the impact has been limited, executives said on Thursday.

Of the more than 300 real estate projects involved in the incident, only 27 are related to Ping An Bank, and all of them are located in first- and second-tier cities or economically developed regions such as the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and Yangtze River Delta region, they said.

Overdue mortgage loans of those properties totaled 78 million yuan ($11.5 million) as of the end of last month, accounting for merely 0.028 percent of the bank's total mortgage loans for personal housing.

"We immediately put in place our emergency mechanism and examined all new property projects," bank president Hu Yuefei said.

In general, the bank's involvement in the incident has been small-scale, and the problem has not had a sizable impact on its business operation, he said.

Responding to the financial risks brought by recent credit defaults among a few property developers, Vice-president Guo Shibang said the bank attaches high importance to risk prevention and quality control when granting loans to the property sector.

"We will continue to strengthen our risk management and control on property loans. Not only will we strive to choose 'good projects', but we will also put more focus on managing them well," he said.

The non-performing loan ratio of the Shenzhen-based lender stood at 1.02 percent as of the end of June, remaining flat compared to the year-end level in 2021. Over 26.68 billion yuan in non-performing assets were recovered in the first half, growing 34.8 percent year-on-year.

Ping An generated 92.02 billion yuan in operating revenue in the first half of the year, growing 8.7 percent year-on-year according to its interim results report released on Wednesday.

Net profit saw a 25.6 percent yearly increase to 22.09 billion yuan over the six-month period.