"Fixed income" retreats, "Hybrid" tide rises, multiple wealth management companies shift slightly

By the end of 2025, the banking wealth management market, which has successfully surpassed 33 trillion yuan, is entering a period of structural adjustment. On March 5, Beijing Business Daily reporters found that among 32 wealth management companies, 13 institutions—including China Post Wealth Management, Xingyin Wealth Management, Guangyin Wealth Management, Puyin Wealth Management, Hengfeng Wealth Management, Hangyin Wealth Management, Huiyin Wealth Management, Suyin Wealth Management, Shangyin Wealth Management, BlackRock CCB Wealth Management, Qingyin Wealth Management, Huihua Wealth Management, and Societe Generale Agricultural Bank Wealth Management—have gradually released their 2025 annual reports, presenting their latest business performance.

Overall, the industry is accelerating its shift from a pure fixed-income dominance to a model of “fixed income foundation with diversified enhancements.” The continued expansion of hybrid products and active deployment in A-shares IPOs have become key strategies for wealth management firms to increase returns and attract clients. Industry insiders believe this trend is not only a proactive response to market conditions but also a crucial step for wealth management companies to move toward diversified, layered, and precisely matched mature markets.

Hybrid Wealth Management Products Continue to Expand

As of March 5, Beijing Business Daily reporters found that the 13 disclosed 2025 “performance reports” show that all have achieved positive growth in their assets under management, indicating steady industry expansion.

Among them, Xingyin Wealth Management, Puyin Wealth Management, and China Post Wealth Management each manage over one trillion yuan, with scales of 2.43 trillion, 1.47 trillion, and 1.32 trillion yuan respectively. City commercial bank wealth management firms such as Suyin, Hangyin, Shangyin, Huiyin, and Qingyin also performed well, with assets of 826.159 billion, 607.599 billion, 385.865 billion, 236.485 billion, and 205.613 billion yuan, all showing steady growth. Notably, joint-venture wealth management companies are expanding rapidly, with Societe Generale Agricultural Bank Wealth Management leading the industry with a year-over-year growth rate of 83.25%.

In addition to steady asset growth, product structure adjustments have become a major trend in the 2025 wealth management market. According to reports from various firms, while fixed-income products remain the main offerings, their proportion has gradually declined. Conversely, the share of hybrid products has increased, making the industry’s product diversification trend more apparent.

For example, by the end of 2025, Xingyin Wealth Management’s fixed-income products accounted for 95.10% of its total assets, down slightly from 95.53% at the end of June 2025; hybrid products increased from 3.35% to 3.99%. Hangyin Wealth Management’s 2025 annual report also shows a similar trend, with fixed-income products decreasing to 99.22%, and hybrid products rising. Huiyin Wealth Management’s fixed-income product share also decreased by 0.08 percentage points from June 2025, while its hybrid share increased by 0.14 percentage points.

According to data from the Bank Wealth Management Registration and Custody Center, by the end of 2025, fixed-income products totaled 32.32 trillion yuan, accounting for 97.09% of all wealth management products, a slight decrease of 0.24 percentage points from the beginning of the year. Hybrid products totaled 0.87 trillion yuan, making up 2.61%, up 0.17 percentage points. The scale of equity, commodity, and financial derivatives products remains relatively small, at 0.08 trillion and 0.02 trillion yuan respectively.

Regarding these industry changes, Wang Pengbo, Chief Analyst at Botong Consulting, stated that under the continued pressure on asset-side yields, wealth management firms are adjusting their product structures to seek higher returns. “Current deposit rates are declining, and bond yields remain low, making traditional fixed-income strategies less satisfying for investors seeking moderate returns. Hybrid products, with their broader investment scope including stocks and bonds, can respond more flexibly to market changes,” Wang emphasized. He added that this trend is not short-term but a natural result of the deepening transformation toward net asset value (NAV) based management in the industry.

Bai Wenxi, Vice Chairman of the China Enterprise Capital Alliance, further analyzed that in the long term, the pattern of “fixed income mainly, hybrid as supplement, and diversified development” will become the industry’s long-term structure. The core customer base of bank wealth management products is mainly conservative investors with a rigid demand for principal safety, so the fixed-income “ballast stone” position will remain stable at around 60-70%. Hybrid products will become the key battleground for institutional differentiation, with their share expected to rise from the current 10-15% to 20-30%, serving as a critical area for wealth management firms to compete on research and development capabilities and brand differentiation. Niche products such as equity, commodities, and financial derivatives will also expand in an orderly manner to meet the personalized needs of high-net-worth clients and specific scenarios, ultimately forming a mature, multi-layered, and precisely matched market.

Leveraging New IPOs to Enhance Returns

This structural adjustment is also reflected in the active participation of many wealth management firms in offline A-share IPO subscriptions. Beijing Business Daily reporters found that since the beginning of 2026, wealth management firms have frequently appeared on the offline subscription lists of multiple IPO companies, successfully securing effective bids and becoming important players in the IPO “market of new shares.”

Specifically, on January 29, in the subscription announcement of Linping Development on the Shanghai Stock Exchange main board, four products from Xingyin Wealth Management were included, three of which are hybrid products: “Xingyin Wealth Management Liuxing Cheng Alpha One-Month Holding Period No. 2,” “Xingyin Wealth Management Liuxing Cheng Alpha Daily Open No. 1,” and “Xingyin Wealth Management Xingrui All-Star No. 1,” each applying for 5.5 million shares at 38.41 yuan per share, alongside one fixed-income pension product. At the same time, Ningyin Wealth Management actively participated in offline IPO subscriptions, with six hybrid products applying for 5.5 million shares each at 38.36 yuan per share, also successfully making the effective bid list. Earlier, on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange main board, the subscription list of Shimeng Co., Ltd. also included multiple hybrid products from Ningyin and Xingyin Wealth Management in the effective bid list.

The increase in hybrid product share is driven by wealth management firms’ proactive strategies to respond to market changes and seek higher yields. Bai Wenxi explained that according to the rules for offline allotment of A-share IPOs, institutional products participating in offline IPOs must meet certain equity investment position requirements. Hybrid products, with their stock allocation flexibility, can adjust their underlying holdings to meet IPO participation thresholds, offering greater yield elasticity. Pure fixed-income products, limited by their equity positions, often find it difficult to meet these standards.

He further explained that participation in IPOs through hybrid products is not just for IPO gains but a natural extension of the “fixed income +” strategy. IPO gains as an additional return component can significantly improve risk-adjusted returns. The stock holdings in hybrid products can synergize with their existing equity allocations, reducing trading costs for individual positions. After the new shares are listed, firms can flexibly dispose of them based on market performance, either holding long-term or taking profits to feed back into the fixed-income portion.

Looking ahead, what will the product landscape of the wealth management market look like? How can the industry improve risk management while enhancing investor returns? Wang Pengbo believes that the product structure will become increasingly diversified. Fixed income will not disappear but will be increasingly supplemented by other strategies. Hybrid products may further subdivide into specialized categories such as IPO-focused, dividend stocks, quantitative neutral, and others.

However, as the focus shifts toward equities, risk cannot be ignored. Wang recommends improving information disclosure and risk warnings to ensure investors understand what they are buying. Additionally, internal controls such as position management, stop-loss mechanisms, and liquidity management should be strengthened to prevent large-scale redemptions or significant net value declines during market fluctuations.