Liu Minxia mllmx@msn.com A NEW management team of Ping An Bank met the press Friday, outlining a fresh vision for the banking unit of Ping An Insurance following a leadership reshuffle in October and elaborating its strategies for achieving their goals. The bank, created upon a merger between the former Ping An Bank and Shenzhen Development Bank in 2012, saw its net profit grow 3.36 percent from a year earlier to 22.6 billion yuan (US$3.5 billion) for 2016, the slowest since its inception. Its net profit growth rates were 13.6 percent, 30 percent and 10.4 percent for 2013, 2014 and 2015, respectively. The bank’s nonperforming loans (NPLs) surged accordingly to 25.7 billion yuan from 17.7 billion yuan at the end of 2015, up 45.66 percent, while the NPL rate rose to 1.74 percent from 1.45 percent from a year ago. The bank’s net profit growth has started coming down since early 2016 as it was undergoing the toughest phase of its targeted retail banking transition, a challenge faced by almost all traditional banks. Its net profit grew by 8 percent, 6 percent and 5.5 percent quarter on quarter for the first three quarters of 2016, when it was still under the helm of Shao Ping, a previous vice president of China Minsheng Banking Corp. who brought a team of Minsheng managers with him to Ping An Bank. New bank board chairman Xie Yonglin, a Ping An Insurance veteran, said that he hopes the bank will achieve major breakthroughs in switching its traditional retail banking to an intelligent one this year by utilizing high technology and social media. Xie, a deputy general manager of Ping An Insurance and previously chairman of Ping An Securities, has invested 37 million yuan for the bank’s technological upgrades in the past months and recruited technology talents to support the upgrading, said Cai Xinfa, an assistant to the bank president. Xie said the new leadership has adjusted the bank’s management structure in the past three months by reducing the number of its headquarters departments to 32 by cutting 10 offices. | 