BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s central bank and banking regulator on Friday jointly unveiled a list of 19 banks deemed to be systemically important in a move to fend off major financial risks.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) identified six state-owned commercial banks, nine joint-stock banks and four urban commercial lenders as crucial to the financial system, according to a statement on its website.
The list of banks includes the country’s four largest lenders: Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China and Bank of China.
It also includes mid-sized lenders such as China Minsheng Banking Corp, and Ping An Bank, the banking unit of the insurance giant Ping An Insurance Group.
The banks will face additional capital requirements of between 0.25% and 1%, the PBOC and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) said.
The 19 lenders also need to meet additional leverage requirements, and prepare contingency plans for major risk events, they added.
The listing and grading of important banks are aimed at further improving the risk management at major Chinese banks and to bring them into line with global standards, they said.
Lenders included in the list have met with the additional requirements already, and there’s no imminent need for them to boost capital, so the new rules will not impact their capability in credit supplies, they added.
(Reporting by Zhang Yan, Cheng Leng and Ryan Woo; Editing by John Stonestreet and Mark Potter)
