The assets of foreign banks in Shanghai saw year-on-year growth of 13 percent in 2017, while their bad-loan ratio stood below the industry's average, the banking regulator said yesterday.
Overseas banks in Shanghai recorded 1.56 trillion yuan ($243 billion) in assets at the end of 2017, accounting for 10.6 percent of the city's entire banking sector, according to the Shanghai Office of the China Banking Regulatory Commission.
The non-performing loan ratio of foreign banks in Shanghai stood at 0.34 percent at the end of last year, below the industry's average of 0.57 percent and down 0.17 percentage points from the first half of 2017.
Overseas banks and their Chinese counterparts jointly launched 13 projects worth 89.5 billion yuan last year to deepen their cooperation.
The city's foreign banks have also seen 671.7 billion yuan in outstanding loans to Chinese clients involved in the Belt and Road initiative.
Meanwhile, they backed the development of local science and technology firms. Data from the regulator showed these banks had served 440 such firms by the end of the third quarter of 2017, up 43.8 percent from the start of the year. The outstanding loans to these clients topped 14 billion yuan at the end of September, up 53.9 percent from the start of 2017.
Shanghai was home to 230 foreign banking institutions from 29 countries and regions at the end of last year, the regulator said.
