"New Growth Formula" and Digital Intelligence Sample: A Look at Pudong Development Bank's 2025 Practices from the Annual Report

Under the dual constraints of macroeconomic uncertainty and the downward adjustment of interest rate centers, the growth logic of commercial banks is shifting rapidly from “scale-driven” to “structure-driven” and “efficiency-driven.” Against this backdrop, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank’s 2025 annual report provides a representative case study.

The annual report shows that Pudong Bank’s total assets have surpassed 10 trillion yuan for the first time, while asset quality continues to improve; operating income increased to 173.96B yuan, and net profit attributable to the parent rose to 10.4k yuan, demonstrating a coordinated development path of revenue recovery and steady profit growth, with net profit maintaining double-digit growth for two consecutive years. In an environment where the industry’s net interest margin is under overall pressure at 1.42%, Pudong Bank achieved “double growth” in revenue and profit, making it relatively rare among joint-stock banks.

Looking further, Pudong Bank’s 2025 growth has a more structural significance: its profit model is shifting toward a dual-driven approach centered on revenue growth and cost control. This change fundamentally stems from the combined effects of digital intelligence strategies, regional deep cultivation, and AI capabilities, gradually consolidating into Pudong Bank’s own “new growth formula.”

Digital Intelligence Strategy: From Capability Foundation to Business System Rebuilding

In the context of widespread increased technology investment across the industry, Pudong Bank’s digital transformation has moved from single-point tool applications to a systematic business restructuring phase.

From the strategic evolution perspective, at the end of 2023, Pudong Bank established its “Digital Intelligence” strategy and constructed an implementation path of “1-5-5-5-4-3-N.” 2024 marks the beginning of the strategy and architecture reshaping phase, focusing on organizational adjustments and key process reengineering, initially forming the “Five Major Tracks” layout; 2025 enters the capability leapfrogging stage, centered on “core restructuring” and “capability enhancement,” promoting the formation of “Three Super” (super platform, super product, super system) core carriers, continuously strengthening the digital intelligence foundation, and significantly improving business and technology synergy efficiency.

On the investment side, Pudong Bank’s technology investments over the past three years have exceeded 20 billion yuan, with continuous focus on data platforms, intelligent risk control, and digital channels.

On the output side, digital intelligence capabilities are beginning to reflect in customer structure and operational efficiency: the online platform “PuHui Laile” has surpassed 2.6 million registered users; new corporate clients on the platform account for nearly 70% of all new corporate clients; credit customers account for over 60%.

At the product level, centered on data and modeling capabilities, Pudong Bank has launched a series of digital products such as PuShanDai (Pudong Flash Loan), PuKeDai (Pudotech Loan), PuLianTong (Pud Chain Pass), PuHuiDai (Pud Hui Loan), and PuYing Mergers & Acquisitions, utilizing intelligent pricing and risk control models to improve resource allocation efficiency, making product offerings more targeted and differentiated.

From an industry perspective, digital intelligence is no longer just a cost optimization tool but is gradually evolving into an important driver of business growth. This is also a key support for Pudong Bank to achieve steady profit growth amid revenue volatility.

The management of Pudong Bank has also explicitly stated that 2026 will be the year for comprehensive deepening of the digital intelligence strategy, promoting the upgrade from “function construction” to “ecosystem operation,” further strengthening high-quality development capabilities.

Meanwhile, the “Five Major Tracks,” as the business carriers of the digital intelligence strategy, have become important levers for serving the real economy. In the fields of fintech, supply chain finance, inclusive finance, cross-border finance, and treasury finance, all show a trend of shifting from “quantity expansion” to “quality enhancement.”

Among them, the scale of fintech loans has exceeded 1.04 trillion yuan, serving over 256k tech companies; online supply chain finance transactions reached 256k yuan, a year-on-year increase of 194.82%; inclusive finance loans increased by 52.3991 billion yuan, with customer numbers growing by 24.22%; cross-border transaction settlement volume reached 44.931 trillion yuan, up 44% from the previous year; the balance of personal AUM (including market value) was 4.6645 trillion yuan, an increase of 20.26% from the end of last year.

Deep regional cultivation: “Arrow Strategy” shows initial results

In the context of increasing regional economic differentiation, regional strategies have become key variables affecting banks’ asset quality and growth stability.

Pudong Bank, based on national regional development strategies, promotes differentiated innovation in key regional operations, focusing on the Yangtze River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, Yangtze River Economic Belt, and Chengdu-Chongqing Economic Zone, radiating nationwide. It advances the regional “Arrow Strategy,” building a “collaborative linkage” regional financial service system, and achieving high-quality development through the implementation of major national strategies.

Specifically, from a scale perspective, the Yangtze River Delta, one of China’s most dynamic regions, hosts advanced manufacturing, technological innovation, and export-oriented economies, providing stable and high-quality credit sources for banks. Pudong Bank aims to “build a flagship of integrated financial services in the Yangtze River Delta,” taking supporting the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta as a strategic fulcrum for the entire bank’s development. Through mechanism innovation, resource coordination, and industrial chain support, it deeply integrates into the national strategic layout.

At the end of the reporting period, Pudong Bank’s total loans in the Yangtze River Delta reached 2.00 trillion yuan, and total deposits reached 2.47 trillion yuan, maintaining a leading position among joint-stock banks. The average daily balance of local and foreign currency deposits increased by 240.8 billion yuan year-on-year, accounting for over 50% of the bank’s incremental deposits; local and foreign currency loan balances increased by 163 billion yuan, accounting for over 55% of the bank’s incremental loans, demonstrating a significant regional driving effect.

Meanwhile, Pudong Bank focused on supporting major infrastructure projects in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, aiding traditional industry upgrades and emerging industry development. At the end of the period, the public loan balance in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei exceeded 350 billion yuan, an increase of over 36 billion yuan, up 11.33%; the public loan balance in the Greater Bay Area exceeded 530 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 72 billion yuan, up 15.45%.

AI empowerment: From efficiency tool to production factor restructuring

If digital intelligence is the infrastructure, then AI is the core variable driving a new wave of efficiency revolution in banking. Pudong Bank’s AI deployment has moved from isolated applications to systematic, scaled promotion.

At the customer management level, AI is reshaping customer acquisition and service models. Relying on large models and data analysis capabilities, the bank can achieve refined customer profiling and demand forecasting, shifting from “passive response” to “proactive management.”

In wealth management, Pudong Bank launched the “CaiZhi α” asset allocation system and the AI intelligent agent “PuXiaoCai,” covering investment education, allocation, and tracking, promoting intelligent and personalized customer service upgrades.

In risk management, AI uses multimodal data and intelligent risk control models to monitor the entire process of pre-loan, during-loan, and post-loan stages, improving the timeliness and accuracy of risk identification. The recognition system, combined with big data and algorithms, shifts risk management from reactive to proactive early warning.

In operations, AI is driving process automation and intelligent upgrades. Pudong Bank has built an “AI Smart Factory,” improving efficiency and replacing manual work in scenarios such as corporate account opening, judicial inquiries, and auto loan processing. For example, some processes now have significantly improved turnaround times, with a marked reduction in manual intervention, continuously optimizing operational costs.

More importantly, AI is deeply integrated with the business system, forming a “data-model-business” closed loop. In supply chain finance and inclusive finance, AI models are used to identify industry chain relationships and assess enterprise credit, improving financing efficiency and reducing information asymmetry. These capabilities are reflected in business data: by the end of the report period, supply chain finance had served 37,408 upstream and downstream clients, an increase of 97.76% from the previous year, with business growth and risk control advancing in tandem.

Overall, Pudong Bank’s 2025 performance is not merely a cyclical recovery but a stage of structural upgrading.

The digital intelligence strategy provides underlying capabilities, regional deep cultivation consolidates asset foundations, and AI empowerment drives business model restructuring. The three layers together form a new growth paradigm. Under this logic, the core of bank competition is shifting from scale and interest margins to a comprehensive competition of data capabilities, regional layout, and technological application.

From an industry perspective, Pudong Bank’s practices are somewhat representative: the future direction of banking transformation may evolve from “funds intermediary” to “data and service platform.” In this process, those who can lead the capability system reconstruction first will be more likely to seize the initiative in the new industry cycle.

2025 is both a critical node for Pudong Bank’s own development and a microcosm of joint-stock banks’ new stage of growth driven by digital intelligence and AI.