Ping An Bank's first-half 2026 recovery broadened as its retail banking business returned to stronger profitability and the bank elevated retail oversight by appointing Wang Jun as vice president on August 14, subject to approval from China's National Financial Regulatory Administration. The lender had already reported operating revenue of 70.62 billion yuan, up 1.8% year-on-year, and net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company of 25.7 billion yuan, up 3.3%, marking the first half-year period since 2025 in which both revenue and net profit posted positive year-on-year growth. Retail banking emerged as a key support for that rebound. First-half retail net profit rose to 2.15 billion yuan from 1 billion yuan a year earlier, lifting its contribution to total net profit to 8.4% from 4%. As of end-June, Ping An Bank had 129 million retail customers, up 0.8% from the start of the year, and retail customer assets under management of 4.4 trillion yuan, up 3.8%. Personal loan balances were 1.73 trillion yuan, while the personal loan non-performing loan ratio was 1.23%, unchanged from the start of the year, and the personal loan NPL formation rate fell 0.49 percentage points year-on-year to 1.15%. Wealth management was the main retail growth engine. Fee income from that business climbed 35.6% to 3.34 billion yuan, including 1.01 billion yuan from agency personal insurance, up 51.2%, and 1.52 billion yuan from agency personal funds, up 45.1%. Wang said retail lending conditions remained challenging across the industry, but Ping An Bank's retail loan operations were showing signs of bottoming out, which he attributed to clearing high-risk assets, increasing deployment toward quality assets and refining products and services. The appointment marks the first time in nearly a decade that Ping An Bank's retail division has again been led by a vice president-level executive, signaling a renewed elevation of the unit within the bank's structure. Management continued to stress that growth would be driven by quality and sustainability rather than aggressive expansion. Party secretary and CEO Ji Guangheng said the bank could not expect a return to an era of rapid balance-sheet growth and instead needed to control operating and risk costs while building profit growth that can withstand cyclical tests.