China Merchants Bank Retail Banking Development Strategy

Since early of this century, by the fast development of domestic economy and the accumulation of personal wealth, there has been a bright future for Chinese commercial banks to develop retail banking business. And also by the rapid growth of capital market, the restriction of capital adequacy requirements, the competition from foreign funded banks, there has been a great pressure for Chinese commercial banks to change their development strategy from focusing on cooperate banking business to retail banking business. The domestic banks, which China Merchants Bank (CMB) as their representative, have all claimed to adopt the retail banking priority strategy. This article compared the history and development tendency of retail banking between domestic and foreign banks, analyzed the possibility and necessity of domestic banks to develop retail banking business. On the basis of a thoroughly understanding of CMB, by practicing the SWOT measures to analyze the strength and weakness of CMB, and the opportunity and threat of CMB is confronting, giving the viewpoints of how to develop the retail banking business of CMB. The result is that CMB has the potential to become the leading retail bank of China.