Wealth management and trust products distributed by commercial banks along with their off-balance sheet businesses are not part of China's informal financial sector - commonly known as "shadow banking," a top regulator clarified yesterday.China Banking Regulatory Commission chairman Shang Fulin also said it would make sure operations of commercial banks were not affected by the dangers of the nation's massive shadow banking sector - seen worth 30 trillion yuan (HK$37.2 trillion) in 2012.
"We will never know how big shadow banking is if we don't have an official definition for it," said Jiang Jianqing, chairman of ICBC (1398).
Wealth management and trust products are now popular in the mainland. But the underlying securities for some products are sometimes not revealed to investors.
"What concerns us is that investors do not know how their funds are being used, like when they buy some trust products," said Kathy Xu Kejia, an investment manager at Aberdeen Asset Management in Hong Kong.
ICBC president Yang Kaisheng, meanwhile, sees the bank's new lending growing faster this year from 2012.
Bank of China (3988) chairman Xiao Gang said it will extend more credit to small- and medium-sized enterprises instead of state-owned enterprises as SMEs are willing to pay higher interest rates.
