Stabilizing for the first time in four years! In the second quarter, the banking industry's net interest margin rose slightly compared to the previous quarter.

In the second quarter of this year, the net interest margin of commercial banks stabilized and increased for the first time in four years. On August 14, the Financial Regulatory Administration released data on the main regulatory indicators of the banking and insurance industries for the second quarter of 2026. In the second quarter of 2026, the net interest margin of commercial banks was 1.41%, an increase of 0.01 percentage points from the first quarter's 1.40%. Looking back, the net interest margin of commercial banks fell below 2% to 1.97% in the first quarter of 2022 and entered a downward trend, with the industrys net interest margin continuing to be under pressure. After stabilizing at 1.42% for three consecutive quarters in 2025, it further declined to a low of 1.40% in the first quarter of 2026. This slight change may indicate that the continuous unilateral decline of the net interest margin since 2022 has entered a phase of oscillation and bottoming out, which is slightly better than the market's previous expectation of a small month-on-month decline, said Dong Ximiao, Chief Economist at ZhaoLian.