BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s banking and insurance regulator said on Wednesday that the sector’s bad loan ratio is 2.04%, and estimated it will continue to rise in the second quarter but not at a fast pace.
Loan defaults, repayment delays, and bad loans all rose in the first quarter as the coronavirus outbreak triggered unprecedented economic challenges, Huang Hong, vice chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC), told a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday.
Huang said that banking sector extended 2.5 trillion yuan ($352.87 billion) in new credit support to firms, shops and individual businesses in the first quarter, twice as much as in the same period last year.
The first-quarter insurance payout reached 301.9 billion yuan this year, Huang added.
Uncertainties are rising on investment returns of insurance capital due to volatility in global capital markets, said Xiao Yuanqi, chief risk officer at the CBIRC, but the sector’s liquidity conditions are stable and will help counter shocks, he said.
(Reporting by Yawen Chen and Se Young Lee; Editing by Kim Coghill)
