Recently, the State Administration of Financial Supervision and the supervision bureaus of many places have disclosed a batch of fines. Nearly 15 banks and financial institutions were fined a total of more than 45 million, of which Zheshang Bank was fined the most, with a total fine of 1,819 for its three branches50 thousand. 
In recent years, Zheshang Bank has received a lot of fines, and this time it has been punished by a large order, and the problems of internal control management have been exposed more and more obviously.
The fines are mainly for "old diseases".
According to ** statistics, in 2023, Zheshang Bank will receive more than 28 million fines, and the amount of fines this time accounts for more than half. Specifically, among the three branches, the Shanghai branch was fined and confiscated 1734 for "improper means of absorbing deposits and issuing loans".50,000, as many as 13 relevant responsible persons were banned from business, warned and fined. The penalties imposed on the Ningbo Branch and the Lianyungang Branch were relatively light, with a total fine of no more than one million, and the relevant persons in charge were also punished. It can be clearly seen that the Shanghai branch of Zheshang Bank was the most severely punished, and the root cause was mainly related to the business dealings of Gu Qingliang, the former president of the branch. And he was also banned for life in this punishment. It should be noted that Gu Qingliang's specific departure date was at the end of 2018, and he was ousted in 2020 due to corruption. Therefore, the internal control problems of the Shanghai branch are mainly based on "old diseases". At the same time, the other 12 persons responsible for the fines were also related to the illegal business. Including Lin Fei, then Deputy General Manager of the Wealth Management Center of the Branch, Liu Desheng, then Vice President of the Branch, Zhou Bufei, Risk Monitoring Officer and Vice President, and other senior executives of important business departments. 
As for the specific reasons for Zheshang Bank's deposit and loan business by "improper means", although the regulatory penalty is not specifically specified, it isFrom 2020, the regulator issued 1The clues can be seen in the 0.1 billion sky-high fines. At that time, Zheshang Bank had as many as 31 non-compliant clauses, mainly related party transactions without the approval of the Related Party Transaction Commission, illegal use of wealth management funds for capital increase of insurance companies, and false release of non-performing assets, which were of a relatively serious nature. Among them, the violations related to deposits and loans mainly include: using insurance asset management companies as a channel to illegally reverse deposits deposited with interbank funds into general deposits, inflating general deposits for other banks by investing in the right to benefit from certificates of deposit of general enterprises of other banks, and inflating deposits by investing in false underlying creditor's rights and requiring customers to pledge certificates of deposit; Deposits and pledge guarantees are made to other banks through special purpose vehicles, and other banks provide financing to credit customers of the Bank. Zheshang Bank has a series of "complex" illegal operationsIt shows that not only the Shanghai Branch, but also the Zheshang Bank as a whole also had similar improper operations. In addition, the penalty also mentions the violation of Zheshang Bank's inflated deposits for other banks. In addition, at that time, the regulator's punishment for the Shanghai branch was "confusion in the authorization of wealth management business", and Gu Qingliang himself was warned and fined 300,000 yuan for illegally selling wealth management products to achieve false off-balance sheet assets, and illegally selling wealth management products to help counterparties achieve false off-balance sheet assets. The Shanghai branch of Zheshang Bank was punished by a large order this time, which is just a microcosm of the company's internal control problems over the years.
Internal control issues have been around for a long time
In recent years, Zheshang Bank's internal control problems have been criticized by the market, and many fines have been imposed on credit review, off-balance sheet business and real estate. For example, Zheshang Bank has been punished many times before for violating the rules of "improper means to conduct deposit and loan business". For example, in September 2022, the Zhengzhou branch was fined 1.4 million yuan for three major matters, including the conversion of loans into margins and false deposits; In November of the same year, the Hangzhou Branch was fined 4 million yuan for inflating deposits and loans through asset pools, debt financing plans, receivables confirmation and other businesses, as well as increasing financing for real estate enterprises in the name of construction enterprises through receivables confirmation and domestic letters of credit. 
Zheshang Bank's off-balance sheet and non-standard assets are also a high incidence of violations. The scale of the company's off-balance sheet business is large, including bank acceptance bills, letters of credit, receivables confirmation and other financial guarantee contracts. In the first half of 2023, the scale will reach 7680100 million, in 2The 9 trillion assets account for more than 25%. Taking the recent penalties of Zheshang Bank as an example, in November 2023, Guiyang Branch was fined 1.6 million yuan for 5 violations, including the untrue background of the letter of credit, the return of negotiated funds to the issuer, and the rolling issuance of bank acceptance bills and inflated deposits; The penalty imposed on Ningbo Branch also involved the issue of letter of credit, which involved the company's off-balance sheet business. In the non-standard asset business, the typical one is the violation of debt financing plans, which have been clearly identified as non-standard assets in the new asset regulations in 2019. For example, in the case of the Hangzhou branch being fined in November 2022, it involved the issue of inflating deposits and loans through a debt financing plan; In November 2023, the punishment of the Guiyang branch also included the lack of investment control of the debt financing plan. In addition,Exposure to the real estate sector is expanding. At present, real estate is still an important business item of the company, accounting for more than 10% of corporate loans in the first half of 2023. As early as 2019, the industry's defective rate was only 029%, which rose to 231%, dragging down the company's asset quality. Among the main loan customers of Zheshang Bank, the relatively high proportion of real estate enterprises is also worth paying attention to. Four of the top 10 customers in the first half of 2023 are in the real estate sector. The problem of inadequate loan review of Zheshang Bank has also appeared in the punishment list of the regulator many timesThe specific performance is that it has stepped on many thunderstorms such as Zhongkangmei Pharmaceutical, Shenwu Group, Peking University Founder, and Group Loan Network. According to statistics, from 2020 to 2023, the cumulative amount of fines imposed by Zheshang Bank exceeded 1600 million, of which the fines of 100 million yuan in 2020 accounted for the majority, and ranked second in the list of fines of joint-stock banks that year. It is worth mentioning that in addition to the big fine in 2020, Zheshang Bank was also fined 55.5 million yuan as early as 2018 for 7 compliance issues such as failing due diligence on investment in interbank wealth management products, using misleading language in the sales text of wealth management products, and illegal investment in personal financial management. In addition to the ineffective risk control of the main business, the internal control problems of Zheshang Bank are also accompanied by serious management corruption. For example, in recent years, it has been revealed that Shen Renkang, the former chairman of the board of directors, Gu Qingliang, the former president of the Shanghai branch, Zhang Changgong, the former vice president, and Xu Bing, the former vice president of Zhejiang Commercial Industry and Finance, have been investigated. Behind the frequent fines of Zheshang Bank,It is inseparable from the management's previous aggressive strategy.
Still in the throes of de-risking
Zheshang BankPreviously, the pursuit of scale was too much and risk control was neglectedIt is an important reason for the frequent occurrence of internal control problems and the continuous stepping on thunder. From the perspective of the development history of Zheshang Bank, its establishment time is not long, formerly known as Zhejiang Commercial Bank, is a Sino-foreign joint venture bank established in 1993, approved by the China Banking Regulatory Commission in 2004, after restructuring and restructuring into the current Zheshang Bank. 
In the 10 years from the establishment of Zheshang Bank to 2014, under the leadership of the first president Gong Fangle, the company took the strategy of "one body and two wings" as the core, that is, with the company's business as the main body and the small enterprise and investment banking business as the two wings, the total asset scale has grown rapidly from more than 10 billion yuan to more than 600 billion yuan, and the overall risk exposure is not obvious. In 2014, after Liu Xiaochun, the second president of the company, took office, the business strategy changedShift to a "full-asset management strategy" with a greater focus on scale growth. The so-called "all-asset management strategy" means that while developing traditional credit, it also strengthens cooperation with interbank and non-bank financial institutions to achieve "interbank expansion and investment and loan linkage". As a result, the scale of Zheshang Bank has expanded rapidly, and the scale of assets has continued to grow by leaps and bounds. By the time Liu Xiaochun left office in 2018, the asset scale of Zheshang Bank had exceeded 15 trillion, more than doubled in 4 years. But the risks were gradually exposed, and the many big reddos that he stepped on appeared in the era of Liu Xiaochun. 
The third president, Xu Renyan, put forward the Internet platform service strategy, emphasizing "technology + finance".It did not put de-risking at the strategic level, so the "sequelae" of the previous thunder was gradually reflected in the report. For example, the company's non-performing loan ratio increased from 12% increased to the highest 153%, ranking from the first place in the stock bank that year fell to the sixth place. Since then, the defective rate has fallen, but it will remain at 1 in the first three quarters of 202345%, which is not a low level. At the same time, Zheshang Bank is also in the process of radical expansionA large credit impairment loss was formed, which suppressed the growth of net profit. The net profit margin indicator directly reflects the erosion of profits from credit impairments, which was only 26 in the first three quarters of 202339%, ranking 7th out of 9 joint-stock banks. 
After Zhang Rongsen, the current president of Zheshang Bank, took office, he began to promote the transformation of retail businessAnd de-risk as an important business policy. It is only in the first half of 2023 that the growth of the company's credit impairment scale has been curbed. The company's chronically depressed share price also illustrates the problem. Since the company's listing in November 2019, it has achieved a record of 4After a new high of 29 yuan, the stock price has been in a downturn for a long time, and has fallen to 2 recently65 yuan shares, down nearly 40% during the period. On the whole, there is not much time left for Zheshang Bank to improve the internal control of the enterprise, and if it is not resolved as soon as possible, it may even drag down the growth of asset scale in the future.