Banks shift marketing resources at the beginning of the year: insurance sees an influx of funds, while wealth management encounters a cold spell.

"Is it worth buying bank wealth management products?" On February 26th, at a bank branch in Beijing, an investor consulted with a customer manager in front of the wealth management counter. Due to the fluctuations in the equity market, the current returns on some bank wealth management products are under pressure, and many investors have reported that the wealth management products they have purchased have shown zero or even negative daily returns. In order to deal with market fluctuations and attract more customer funds, wealth management institutions have launched special wealth management products such as "Lantern Festival exclusive" and "Chinese New Year exclusive". At the same time, the industry has initiated a wave of fee reductions, with many wealth management institutions intensively lowering the rates of fixed management fees and sales service fees for wealth management products. However, investors do not seem to buy into this. Industry insiders believe that the contradiction between investors' expected returns and risk preferences will fully manifest in 2026. Wealth management institutions have two main paths to address this contradiction: one is to extend the duration by locking in returns through the allocation of medium to long-term assets, and the other is to improve wealth management product performance through multi-asset allocation. However, both paths have their own advantages and disadvantages, and face multiple practical constraints.