Commercial Banks Off-balance Sheet Business In China's Strategic Thinking

Off-balance sheet activities (OBSA) brings enormous vigor to banking businesses through its features of low cost, high income and risks avoidance function. Meanwhile, OBSA promotes the functions of serving clients, tying up and consolidating relations with clients, accelerating the development of traditional business. Therefore, it is natural that foreign commercial banks have paid much attention to the development of OBSA. OBSA has become the third pillar with its great increase of significance and scale in commercial bank's business structure.As we all know, SWOT (strength-weakness-opportunity-threat) is a popular method of strategic management in common enterprises. However, it is applied to commercial banks, a special industry. Through the course of SWOT analysis, we try to find strength and weakness of commercial banks, as well as opportunities and threat derived from the economics environments. According to the SWOT matrix, feasibility to develop OBSA in domestic commercial banks can be demonstrated, and a framework of strategy is put forward at last.