Welcome to the 2026 interim results announcement. I am very happy to be here with the media friends, analysts, and investors.

Here, I would like to extend my warm welcome for your active participation, and also, I'd like to express my sincere thanks to for your long-term support for Agricultural Bank of China. Present at today's press conference are Vice Governor Lin Li, Wang Wei, Wang Zhiqing, Wang Xiaoqing, and Board Secretary Liu Qing.

We're also joined by the directors who join us online. Here, I would like to expand to you three aspects.

The operational performance of Agricultural Bank of China. 2026 is the first year of the 14th Five-Year Plan.

The Agricultural Bank of China earnestly implemented the decision and arrangement of CPC Central Committee and the State Council, deeply practiced the people-centered financial work, adhered to the mainline of preventing risks and promoting high-quality development. Here, I would like to share with you the main figures for the operational performance of our bank.

The profit growth rate exceeded 5%. In the first half year, net profit had a grow by 5.8%, an increase of 1 percentage point compared to the first quarter, and our operating income increased by 11.2% year on year, an increase of 0.7 percentage point as compared to the first quarter, showing good growth momentum.

Also, we, in the first half year, the return on net assets was 10.14%, maintaining a leading level among comparable peers. The second set of data is that the increase in financing exceeded 3 trillion yuan in the first half year.

The Agricultural Bank of China effectively tapped into the financing needs of the real economy with a large-scale financing increase, including loans and bonds reaching 2.2 trillion yuan, of which the increase in local and foreign currency loans amounted to 1.69 trillion yuan, an increase of 6.2%. The increase in bond investment reached 1.52 trillion yuan with a growth rate of 9.6%.

Average daily balance of board deposits amounted to 29.59 trillion yuan with an increase of 3.67 trillion yuan, achieving a growth rate of 10.2%. Thirdly, the net interest margin expanded by 2 basis points, benefiting from the continuous effectiveness of our volume-price synergy management.

In the first half year, the net interest margin of Agricultural Bank of China was 1.28%, 2 basis points higher than that of the first quarter, showing stabilizing trend. The deposit cost of funds was 1.13%, down 21 basis points from the end of last year.

The cost of liability improved steadily. Fourth, the non-performing loans ratio decreased by another 2 basis points to 1.25%, down 2 basis points from the beginning of the year, the fifth consecutive quarter of decline.

The expected net gap between non-performing loans and total loans remained negative for 24 consecutive quarters, reflecting the strict standards for risk classification. The provision coverage ratio for watch list loans was 138%, down 1 basis point from the beginning of the year.

The provision coverage ratio was 290.1% with provision balance remaining above 1 trillion yuan. It demonstrated strong risk-absorbing capacity.

Fifth, the dividend payout ratio was raised by 1 percentage point. In order to actively reward investors and share the achievements of the bank's development, the Board of Directors proposed to pay the interim dividend for 2026 by raising the ratio by 1 percentage point to 31%.

These are the achievements we have scored in the first half year, and these are the very important operational success, reflecting a balanced approach between profit growth and investor returns. It also represents a balanced consideration between scale expansion and net interest margin improvement.

Secondly, I would like to share with you the main work of the management team. We continued to commit to the agriculture, rural areas, and farmers' business and solidify our position in as a leading bank in rural revitalization.

These um agriculture, rural areas, and farmers are the mission entrusted to ABC by the Party Central Committee. ABC has always carried forward its fine tradition of serving agriculture and rural areas, and aims to be a leading bank in rural revitalization.

In the first half year, we focused on food security, also we focused on rural industries, rural development, and other key areas related to strengthening and benefiting farmers and continued to increase the credit supply. Now, as of the end of June, the balance of loans in county-level areas reached 11.92 trillion yuan, an increase of 9% over the beginning of the year.

The balance of the bank's exclusive products for farmers, the Huinong E-Dai, Dong, reached 2.1 trillion yuan, an increase of 14.2% over the beginning of the year. The balance of deposits in county-level areas was 14.94 trillion yuan with an increase of 505 54.9 trillion yuan, and contributed 40% to the bank's total deposit growth, and the proportion of county-level branches rose to 56.8%.

The ABC has always taken as its position to mission to serve the real economy, focused on the coordination between old and the new growth drivers and the trend of industrial transformation upgrading, continuously optimizing the allocation of financial resources. Grounding in fintech, we've used a high quality measures to support the building of a country with a strong and science and technology foundation.

The growth rate of loans to tech companies and small and medium-sized the tech enterprises stood at 24% and 29% respectively. We've steadily advanced the pilot program of AIC equity investment.

31 pilot funds have been established in total, with funds invested in 66 fintech innovation projects amounting to over 5.7 billion yuan. We've stepped up efforts in underwriting and investing in Sci-Tech innovation bonds, with 37 such bonds underwritten in the first half of the year, and the and also the insurance exceeded 1.2 120 billion yuan.

The balance of self-operated green bond investments amounted to 173.1 billion yuan, up by 9.7%. With a focus on inclusive financing, we've strengthened the capacity for sustainable development.

The balance of inclusive loans reached 4.88 trillion yuan with an increase of 532.4 billion yuan, and the number of inclusive MSME borrowers reached 500 5.58 million with an an increase of over 340,000. The number of physical social security card users reached 3.84 billion, and the scale of pension entrusted management was 438.6 billion yuan with a 14.3% increase in the number of individual pension clients.

The deposit amount rose by 36.7%. In the field of digital finance, we strongly promoted the R&D and application of new generation communication technology, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and other industries, with the loans to the digital economy increasing by 16.1%.

In response to the national policy to boost the consumption, we focused on housing mortgage, daily consumption, and other areas and kept increasing the credit supply. The balance of personal consumption loans, including credit cards, amounted to 1.5 trillion yuan with an increase of 49.054 billion yuan.

We've served the country's high-level opening up and promoted the development of cross-border RMB business in an orderly manner. In the first half year, the cross-border RMB settlement volume reached 1.96 trillion yuan, and the international settlement volume of domestic branches amounted to 80 867.5 trillion dollars.

As of the end of June, the total number of personal customers of the ABC reached 905 million, maintaining the first place in the industry. The number of corporate customers exceeded 14 million with an increase of 910,000 since the beginning of the year.

The number of credit card customers was 76.98 million with an increase of 2.82 million. The number of personal mobile banking customers was 629 million with 282 million monthly active users and 295 million monthly active users on mobile devices.

ABC has always been customer-oriented and has continuously strengthened the construction of its customer service system, achieving common development with its customers. In terms of retail customers, it has deepened the business system of customer stratification and classification, focused on key customer groups such as elderly, salaried individuals, and new citizens, and providing differentiated services based on their need.

For the corporate clients, based on the customers' need, we provide comprehensive service to medium-sized customers and provide the customized service to the medium-sized clients and convenient service for the inclusive small and micro enterprises. We will also adhere to technology-driven transformation, and based on different scenarios, we continue to optimize account opening process, enrich online products and services, and enhance the capabilities of mobile and online service so as to further enhance client experience.

We also stay true to our original aspiration and founding mission to serve the people with financial services, promote rural service projects, introduce seven rules for rural services, provide quality financial service for special client groups. Fourthly, we must forge ahead with reform and leverage smart bank construction to drive business development.

ABC actively embraces the waves of AI development, accelerates the construction of smart banks, and takes the application of intelligent agents as the starting point, promotes the coordinated development of business, technology, and data, continuously improves the AI-plus capability system. We will accelerate the digital business innovation, and in terms of process innovation, we have built a digital operation platform driven by AI technology and facilitated by tablets, helping to spend and increase online credit.

In terms of channel innovation, we've released the 1 11.2 version of personal online banking and continue to enrich the personalized service of mobile banking app, exploring construction of conversational and the service interaction. We will also enhance the intelligence of risk prevention and control, innovating the AI risk control agents and to upgrade the entire process of inclusive financing risk control to be more intelligent.

We will deepen the AI application in compliance risk scenario and effectively enhance the quality and efficiency of compliance management. We will also strengthen support for frontline staff and release self-developed AI agents, the Dragon Knight, to adapt to the technical requirements of different scenarios and business needs, creating corporate and AI digital assistant, and we have completed the DeepSeek and Qianwen new model application, and try to continue to enhance our AI capability.

The fifth aspect is to strengthen the safety defense line and escort the high-quality development. Preventing, prevention and control is always our key task.

In the financial work, we will continue to focus on the risk prevention control, will adhere to prudent and stable business strategy, continuously improve the comprehensive risk management system. In terms of credit risk, we focus on control the increase, reduce the stock, and strengthening the foundation, continuously optimizing the credit structure and constantly improving the risk prevention and control system for inclusive retail with Agricultural Bank of China's characteristic.

We will also continue to improve the market risk system, the annual policy for risk management and financial market business and interbank business, and strengthen risk control requirements for market business. We track and study market changes, proactively optimize business strategies, strengthen risks control, and keep relevant indicators stable.

We closely follow international situations and market changes, dynamically adjust response strategies, and ensure risk controllability. On technology risks, we've steadily advanced the relocation of computer room and continuously enhanced regional disaster recovery capabilities.

We also improve the network security protection, actively respond to external risk shocks and new risk challenges. The average daily trading volume of distributed core system is 1.96 billion with a year-on-year increase of 17%, and the serviceability during main business hours is 100 hours.

When talking about the future development trend, I believe there are three changes of trends. This has created great space of development for the Agricultural Bank of China.

Also the economic structure is changing profoundly in the first seven months of this year, the proportion of bound financing increased and this whole financial structure is changing, this has imposed a new challenges for the banks. We need to find a new benefit spaces and possibilities, and also at the same time, we noticed that the AI technology is accelerating in its growth, we need to integrate the AI system into our business management system, and also we need to control the risks related to AI development and AI technologies.

For ABC, we need to hold on to our own advantages, and we need to find our position in the whole economic development of China, and we need to focus on the economic upgrading of our country, and we will have more efforts put into the county-level economy and real economy development, and focus on our five priorities of financial development, and upgrade our own credit system in order to better serve the economic upgrading and transformation. Also we will have more attention paid to the international financial market and how we cooperate with our partners, and also we need to seize this opportunity of AI technology development to empower our whole process of and system of development using AI technology.

Looking into the second half of the business operation, our executives and our Board of Directors will coordinate the keys of works we have done in the previous half of the year of 2026, and we are going to increase our quality of asset, and we will try to improve the quality of our asset, and also to create more value for our investors in the future. That's my introduction.

Thank you very much. Now let's go to the Q&A session.

Let's give the floor to the Secretary of BOD, Madam Liu Qing.

Thank you very much, President Wang. Now let's go to the Q&A session.

In this session, please each of you have the opportunity to give one question, and please briefly introduce your institution and yourself before you ask the questions. Let's give the microphone to this madam.

Thank you very much. I'm from CCTV, and I've listened to President Wang's introduction.

We noticed that the operation revenue and the net profit has increased a very high level of growth, and it's very resilient, and a lot of growth are higher than the first season. My question is for the executives, what are your expectations for the second half of year's growth, and what are the driving forces for the growth?

Thank you so much for the question.

Just as you've mentioned, we have always stick to the path of high quality development. We want to have a long-term development, and we want to have an active position in this changing dynamics of the economy.

In the first half of the year, while we are serving the real economy and while we are having this very good performance, we have also made a lot of progress in the indicators of financial performances. All these progress have shown our very stable pattern of development and our strategy for stabilized the development.

Just as Mr. Wang has introduced, looking into the second half of the year, we are very confident to keep on to this track of faster development and maintain a good operation revenue.

If we look at the outside environment, we can see that the economy is showing a trend that the dynamics are towards the internal forces, and also the the whole structure of the economy is operating and optimizing. That has shown there is a great resilience to the China's economic development, and this a stable microeconomic situation has created a very good environment for ABC's development for our high quality development.

If we look into the past of our history's development, and if we look at ABC's own situation of development, we can find that we have our comparative advantages always. We have always focused on how to combine our own advantage with the whole environment development, and also we have a very great and profound basis of clients.

We have very comprehensive products and a very solid capital and assets, which will be our support for future resilience and potential of development. Speaking of the specific driving forces, first of all, we will hold on to our advantage of asset operation, which will help ensure the income from the interest payment.

The Bank of China have always stick to the large number of networks all over China, especially at county level. Now with this rural revitalization policy of China and to build a new type of rural area policy of China, we have our own driving force, and we will continue on this path.

Of course, at the same time, we will have more diversified advantage being explored, and for the second half of this year, we will continue on this path. Secondly, we have already achieved the cost of liabilities continuing to decline, and that is in an orderly manner, and for the second half of the year, we will continue on this path.

For the first half of the year, this average daily increase in deposit is at a reasonable level and is providing a very good support for the real economy development. On the other hand, it also helps us in reducing this cost of liability.

If we look at this whole trend of development, it seems that the existing debts will gradually mature during the second half of the year, and the continuous decline in debt cost will continue for a long time. Yes, that's the trend we are going to stick to for the second half of the year.

Thirdly, we have already provided more and more of financial services and solutions, and we have already made our contribution to the optimization of the economic structure. This is the whole trend of the whole China's financial market.

There is this changing in the financial structure. Facing this trend, the ABC will of course consolidate our existing advantage, and at the same time, we will have more plans and strategies towards the future to have more long-term transaction capacities cultivated and to improve our capital management capacity, which can help us get through any kind of economic cycle.

Fourthly, we have already achieved this improvement in risk control, and that will help us to have a more solid foundation for future development. We have always regarded this risk control as our foundation of all kinds of operation.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan, our NLP decline rate is ranking number one in the four major banks of China. Also, we have this very good performance speaking of this allowance coverage and other aspects, and these have all set very good foundation and very solid boundary for us to control the risks within a certain field and level.

All these four factors have shown our achievements. They have helped us to gain a very solid growth in the first half of the year, and it will continue to help us in the second half of the year.

Thank you very much for the introduction about ABC's profit-making ability. Now let's give the floor to this journalist in the middle.

Thank you. I'm from the Xinhua News Agency, Xinhua Financial News.

Mr. Wang, you mentioned that the NLP rate have been declined for five consecutive years, and there is this growing capacity in terms of this allowance rate rate.

What is your expectation for the whole year's asset quality operation, and especially for inclusive retail asset quality? Thank you.

Thank you for your question. We have always, ABC has always put the risk control in the core of all our works.

We always stick to the path of prudent and stable operation. We want to have this very stable and very careful risk control, which can make our whole business operation more resilient and more sustainable.

Our whole ABC's asset quality has the following features. First, this NLP ratio is dropping.

The NPL ratio is dropping. By the end of June, this NPL rate is 1.65%, and well we stick to this category very strict category of categorization, we still maintain this good level, and also there is this BP dropping compared to the year 2025.

All this number have shown that we have quite good risk control in terms of the asset quality. Another feature of us is that the expected ratio is dropping compared to the beginning of this year, and especially the expected scissor gap is dropping is dropping for a consecutive 24 seasons, and this negative number is very important for us because it shows the quality asset of us.

Also this allowance coverage rate is a very high. This balance of the allowance coverage rate have exceeded a trillion yuan, and that's a very good foundation.

For the first half of this year, the growth in the whole the whole whole size has reached the 29%, and that is a very high level, and this number is ranking the top among other counterparts in China's banking market. Also you've mentioned this retail asset quality, especially the inclusive retail retails banking services.

At the is speaking of the asset quality of this aspect, we have always put our attention on the risk control as always, and we will make more efforts to deal with the remaining non-performing loans in this aspect in this retail of the inclusive finance. Looking into the second half of the year, what we feel is that we still need to keep the credit and asset quality of ABC at a very good level.

Speaking of all the indicators, no matter the non-performing loan, the expected, or the allowance coverage ratio and all the indicators, we still need to pay special attention to them. We are going to do the specific things to achieve such goals.

The first is we will keep optimizing the credit structure, because we always say if you want to serve the macroeconomy, the finance, you need to understand the macroeconomic situation. Also we always want to understand the situation of certain industries if we want to provide some financial and credit support for such industries.

That's why we will have more customized, targeted design of the credit resources, which can suit the need of our country's economic strategic development. We will pay special attention to the structural risks of all industries, and to control disorderly competitive situations.

We will reduce the excess the the excess overcapacity, and we will try to control the low quality loans for our customers. Also, another measure is we will have a long-term mechanism which can help us to look into the future and analyze the situation of things that might happen.

This is going to be a long-term mechanism for us, especially for the risks related to our customers and high-risk customers, and also the different categories of customers, and how to manage the loans of those already exceeded customers and also the loans that are about to due or are due to. We are all going to pay special attention and strengthen the control of all these categories.

At the same time, we have already done a lot for the inclusive retail financing system, and now the whole society is paying special attention to the inclusive retail finance risk control. We are looking at this whole situation, we are following it closely, and we are having strict control of it, and we will have more policies and strategies based on our working reality, like reconstructing our whole bank's credit system to manage the credit structure.

A very important measure of us is that for any credit measures, we believe it is very important, it's the frontline of risk control, because it's the source of any other operation of businesses. Another important line for us is the risk control and legal compliance control, and this will help us to work with the real business of credit risk control and together to have a more effective outcome.

Risk management is a very important line, and the risk management and compliance department form the second line of defense, focusing on independence and professionalism. We dynamically improve the risk management policy system and effectively play the role of checks and balance on business lines.

We prevent risk middle platform from malfunctioning, and internal audit department of the bank is the third line of defense for risk management. We'll focus on strengthening the independent evaluation of effectiveness of the first two lines of defense and conduct penetrating supervision to ensure that the risk management system does not lose control.

At the same time, we'll attach great importance to external supervision, and the fourth line of defense formed by social supervision and the focus of which is to form internal and external collaboration in risk control and joint efforts that resonate in the same frequency to prevent the failure of internal risk control. Therefore, the four lines of defense are: one is to prevent diversion, and the other is to prevent failure.

One is to prevent out-of-control, and the other is to prevent failure. The second aspect is to actively promote new business development models.

We have also considered this repeatedly and have promoted the establishment of a new business development model with a top-level design of the head office provincial branch, and a tangible operation of the second branch, and the template marketing of the sub-branch that helps the business line to focus more on local characteristics of the business. First year, first part, and 13 financial ecosystem map to develop credit plans, screen high-quality customers, and carry out standardized marketing activities, creating proactive customer acquisition batch, automatization, and a source customer acquisition business development models and paths.

Compared with the past retail loans, there should be a big difference, from a fragmentation to proactive customer acquisition. The third aspect is to promote integration between online and offline, and we need to formulate the unique competitive advantage in ABC's credit management.

This is mainly achieved through leveraging ABC's large reach branches, which are numerous and widespread, and the client manager team is strong. For us, we have a group of 460,000 employees, and we feel that if these employees can play their role as well, it is crucial for risk control.

We iterate and promote the model of combining on-site and remote work, and make great efforts to ensure that the on-site work is solid. We also realize that it is by relying on the models, but never relying on one model.

Therefore, we adhere to the separation of examination and approval, host the restriction and form a mutual restraint, a business mechanism of supervision and restraint, and through mutual intervention to make up for the shortcomings of model decisions. We feel this ourselves, because the important part part of the bank's credit business is due intelligence.

If we simply use AI or models, we feel that due diligence will hardly be in place, because a good due diligence should have at least three characteristics. The first one is that it should be on-site.

The second characteristic is that it should be able to ensure authenticity, and be responsible, and take up the responsibility of management. We personally feel that in work practice, AI plus offline integration can help improve the quality of due diligence, forms a very good assistant.

In this process, as always, we absolutely put an end to all forms of contact, intermediaries, that marketing, and participation in handling business, especially for those illegal intermediaries. If you use them, you may think that you are importing traffic, but in the end, it may yield bad results.

We are very firm on this point. On the premise of implementing offline lending business, we also continue to strengthen the technology empowerment, sharing, and prevention control.

We have a large number of rural household loans, and by using GPS positioning and AI intelligent recognition technology, we can further improve the ability of anti-counterfeiting and anti-counterfeiting of the rural household loans. We also focus on the improvement of the responsibility responsible person system, of inclusive retail, standardize all aspects of the credit process, and clarifies the main responsibility.

Making sure the managers of branches fulfill their responsibilities. When non-performing loans or risk emerge, we shouldn't simply push the blame onto front-line employees.

We also need to focus on the second-tier branches, the management responsibilities of the branches, and the responsibilities of the outlet. We have clarified the negative list of due diligence exemption, further strengthen the supervision of the performance of management responsibilities, and treated an atmosphere of strict management and prudent lending.

To me, to do a good job in lending, we need to ensure that loans can be disbursed, managed, and recovered. Stringent management and prudent lending are necessary.

The fifth aspect is to strengthen the construction of credit team. We have learned and discovered that continuously improve the asset talent is very important.

The credit management organization should be further optimized, and strengthen the credit management team is very important. We need to also strengthen the orientation training of grassroots personnel in inclusive retail business, insist that credit personnel obtain licenses before taking up their jobs.

We need to establish an inclusive credit practitioner's assessment and evaluation system, effectively enhance their ability to perform their duties. There are the first three measures.

The fourth measure for the entire bank's risk control is to strengthen risk management in key areas and accelerate the progress. In terms of real estate, the focus is still on rational views and supporting policies such as the 16 financial measures.

We need to strictly implement the supervision of pre-sale funds and adopt a policy-based approach for each project and a plan for each project, and steadily advance, diffuse real estate risks, and resolve and dispose of them. In the past, real estate development loans put a lot of pressure on banks, and lead to some performing loans.

There are various reasons for this, but one of the reason is the supervision of pre-sale funds. We should deeply learn the lessons from this.

In the first half year, from the overall situation, we have learned the non-performing loan ratio of the real estate industry of ABC, compared with the beginning of the year, remained stable. On local government debt, we adhere to the principle of marketization and legalization.

We standardize and support the market-oriented transformation of financing platforms, but at the same time, we also pay attention to strengthening the monitoring of the risks of the platform after the transformation. We handle new financing in a reasonable and compliant manner, and resolutely guard against the red line of not adding new hidden debts.

We also deeply realize that asset quality is always the lifeline of the bank's operation and management. We also learn that risk control for inclusive retail business is crucial to the stability of the entire ABC and the sustainable development of the bank.

Without effective risk control and compliant management, there can be no high-quality development. We must firmly establish and practice the right view of political achievements, adhere to the bottom-line thinking.

Also, we need to form from the perspective of organization, system, policy, technology, and management, make every effort to build a credit risk culture. In addition to management tools and measures, we also need to promote the whole bank to build a good credit risk culture, including the access culture based on the qualification and authenticity of customers, the authorization culture of capability and risk matching, the professional, refined, forward-looking management culture, the risk control culture of human-machine collaboration and digital empowerment, and so on.

By doing so, we can strengthen risk control, all measures, and we are confident for the long-term future development. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Governor Lin, for the sharing of the ABC's asset quality. Now let's welcome the next question.

Thank you for the opportunity. I'm the analyst, my name is Li Chen, a bank analyst at China Securities.

I have a question about the deposit. We know that the deposit is the traditional strength of ABC.

We see that the repricing of the deposit is progressive and we have to make relatively good retention rate of the deposit. We also noticed that liability cost for ABC has further decreased in the first half of the year.

However, we noticed that the overall pattern of social capital utilization has undergone profound changes. The demand for wealth management among residents also increasing day by day.

I want to ask this question to [Wang Jinzhen?] about the subsequent liability strategy.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for raising the question. We had closely focused on serving rural revitalization and the real economy, actively aligned with macro policies, regulatory requirements, and market changes, and continue to achieve the high-quality development in deposit business.

To summarize this, it mainly shows the following three features. First, deposit growth continued to show a good momentum of stable quantity and high quality, with the average daily balance of all deposit accounts reaching RMB 39.59 trillion at the end of the first half of the year, an increase of 3.67 trillion RMB, up by 10.2% year on year.

Both growth rate and increase outperformed their competitors. The deposit deviation ratio decreased by 0.36 percentage point year on year.

It is the only bank among its competitors that has kept the ratio below 3% for nine consecutive quarters. This has provided high-quality financial resources for real economy.

Second, the core advantages of deposit business have been further consolidated from the perspective of customer structure. The average daily balance of personal deposits in China reached 212,800 yuan, accounting for 64.5% of all deposits in China, with an increase of 1.56 trillion yuan in the first half of the year, maintaining the leading position in industry for 18 consecutive quarters.

From the perspective of regional structure, the average daily balance of county of a county deposits in China stood at 14.73 trillion yuan, accounting for 44.6% of all deposits in China. Also, the contribution rate has increased by 0.1 percentage point compared to the beginning of the year.

It has further played a role of ballast. Thirdly, the coordinated development of deposit quantity and price has been achieved, and efficiency has continued to be released.

Due to rapid growth of deposits in the past few years and the trend of maturity, the stock of time deposits with higher interest rate has entered a cycle of concentrated repricing, especially for 3-year deposit, and the reduction of the benchmark interest rate can reach up to 135 bp. Against the backdrop, the interest expense ratio of deposits in the first half year decreased significantly compared with the previous year.

Just the continuous release of favorable impact of repricing of time deposits upon maturity, it is expected that the interest expense ratio of deposits in our bank will continue to decline in the second half of the year. We, going forward, ABC will always adhere to the main responsibilities of the business and remain customer-centric to further solidify the foundation of deposits and promote high-quality and effective improvement of liability business, as well as the reasonable growth of quantity, so as to provide strong support for high-quality development and shareholder value return.

First, we will fully meet the needs of serving rural revitalization, real economy, and actively meet the financing needs of residents and enterprises to build business service model that meets the diverse needs of the customers, so as to bring continue to drive the steady growth of deposits and provide high-quality financial guarantee for serving rural revitalization and real economy. Secondly, we will continuously consolidate and enhance differentiated competitive advantage.

Our third measure to be taken is to have an overall arrange of all sources of our funding. We are going to follow the pattern of the social capital flow and also to, on the basis of successfully handling the transfer of regular funds due for maturity, and at the same time, we need to make a formulation for the general deposits and central bank loans and other interbank deposits and accelerate the transformation of the settlement payment and other deposits, and altogether we want to optimize the gross structure of the source of capital.

Fourthly, for the second half of our year, we are going to we are going to strive to maximize the benefits derived from the repricing of deposits, and also we are going to strengthen the differentiated management of deposits throughout the whole bank to make the cost of the payment of interest to drop gradually.

Thank you for the question. I'm Yang Jingxin, I'm from China Business Newspaper.

We know that the county-level business is showing the advantage, differentiated advantage of ABC's operation, and we know that there is a very large proportion of such part of business. My question is, what is your plan for the next step of county-level business development?

Are there any long-term or short-term plans?

Thank you for the question. I'm going to answer your question.

From the start of this year, ABC have followed the country policies to help the rural revitalization and the support to the rural and agriculture and the farmers' development. As we have shared, according to the 15th Five-Year Plan of China, we should promote the high-quality development of rural area and rural economy and to form a long-term mechanism of modern agriculture development and to better expand the great results already achieved by poverty alleviation efforts of China, and that is also the future direction of ABC's development.

For ABC, we will always hold on to our banner of serving the agriculture, the rural economy, the rural area, and the farmers. We will always try to improve the contribution of county-level business performance.

We hope that our county-level business can always account for about 40% of the whole business. We are going to do the following things.

First, to serve the agriculture, the rural area, and the rural residents will always be our priority. We are going to have the provision of all kinds of resources to achieve this goal, and the financing at county level is mainly about credit.

Focusing on the important agriculture-related projects in the 15th Five-Year Plan of China, we should know that there are such some realities like the living condition in the county level is not that good and there are very large demand for the credit. We are going to have targeted policies and measures to deal with the real situation, and we hope our credit and our businesses can solve the real needs of the rural residents, and at the same time, we are going to work with like the government and other industries, especially in terms of the supply chain, the value chain, and the the industrial chain of agriculture.

At the technology level aspect of agriculture development, we are going to introduce more policies and technologies to the key counties and to introduce the key mechanisms of our bank and of the whole economy to the key counties and rural areas. At the same time, we we will know the exact goals of rural agriculture and the and rural area and resident development.

We will make our efforts to build some products that can serve to the construction of modern rural service center. Also, we need to follow the strategy of our country.

We will make our 15th Five-Year Plan to serve the rural area and to apply our policies, strategies, and technologies to our agriculture and county-level service-related programs. In terms of integrated service, and we are going to have the special financial debt and programs offered to to the rural area and agriculture-related to the customers to better serve the rural revitalization and the rural residents.

Of course, at the same time, we will always stick to the control of risk as our bottom line. While we are serving the real needs of the rural area, we should always implement the regulations in terms of all kinds of retail and other services.

Especially we are going to improve our level of supervision on of future risks in certain industries. Also, we are going to pay attention to the legal compliance management of programs related to agriculture and rural residents to make sure that the county-level economy remains stable.

At the same time, we are going to improve the mechanism of the agriculture, rural area, rural resident department management. Management is always the foundation, and that is very important for us to improve the service quality we can provide for rural revitalization.

Also, we are going to prioritize our county-level business in terms of the policy, resources, and future plans, including the financing, the human recruitment, and the new channel development. We are going to build more networks at town and county level this year.

We're hoping to have 2,000 more of such points this year. Also, we are going to offer more online services to more county-level business customers.

Also, we are going to use AI and other technology to empower our service for the rural area and the rural residents and agriculture-related business, and we hope we can improve the experience of our customers.

Thank you so much for your answer. Now let's invite a question from online participant.

Thank you so much for this opportunity. I'm My name is Peter Zhang Yi.

I'm from JPMorgan. I want to congratulate ABC on your performance.

My question is about your retail business. We noticed that you are you have more than 900 million individual customers, and the individual deposit is also achieving a very high level, about 3 trillion.

What will be the key of your future individual-related business, retail business?

Thank you for the question. I will give the floor to Mr.

Lin to answer. Thank you for the question.

The retail business has always been the strategic basement foundation of ABC's development. It is of really really important position in ABC's overall development.

For the first half of the year, ABC has followed this requirement of our Party and central government to do the right thing and to achieve the right results and to do the difficult things correctly. In order to do that, we have five priorities in financial services, and that is what we have done.

Also, we have promoted the retail business in order to help the development of the internal demand for our economy, and we have provided a very professional and very targeted services, financial services, for our agriculture-related customers. We have requirement for our retail business, and if briefly sum up sum it up, it is we always require that our any service related to the agriculture and rural area should make a step forward, should make improvement every day.

I have some discussion with my colleagues. We believe that a step every day is not easy to achieve, and it's not difficult to achieve also.

If you want to achieve it, you need to know what should be your capability needed, your resources needed to achieve it. You need to make concerted efforts, you need to say a lot of things, do a lot of things, and to work with a lot of partners in order to achieve that.

For us, to work in the retail business, it is very important, especially for our future high-quality development. If we look at our statistics until the end of June, the deposit of individual is near 21.3 trillion, and this growth is also very high, is near 1 trillion, and that is ranking number one of all major banks.

We have also achieved 3.95 trillion in the individual loans, and increase number, yes, and that is also helping us to achieve the increment of 309.5 billion yuan, and the balance is also ranking number one in all counterparts, in all other banks. What we have felt is that behind the 900 million customers, 900 million accounts are 900 million units of families, and they're under trust.

This whole number of individual customer amount to the the the financial assets of them will amount to 25.7 trillion, and at the that is a really large number. At the same time, we have the diversified service provided to different groups of people, like the elderly customers, the people who gain salary, and the new citizens and different types of customers.

Also the cross-border service is also maintaining a very fast growth at a very high level, and we have achieved a 71.1% of physical precious metals sales, and also additional and the the partnership sales reached also a very high level, 112, and also the AUM values are very high. If we look at the non-performing loan ratio of individual loans, it is about 1.39%, that is a relatively low level.

If we look at the quality of asset of the whole retail sector, we can see that we are having a long-term planning and we are having a step a stable growth, and we have always put our customer at the core of our future development. We hope to gain the satisfactory response of our customers.

It is like a test stone for the quality of our service. For the next step, we are going to further implement like the fourth session of the the fourth plenary session of the 20th central the the Central Economic Work Conference, and also the Central Committee of the Party's meeting and also other policies, and we are going to further optimizing our whole system and to transform our businesses.

For the retail sector, we have four aspects that we need to make progress. The first is that we need to have a very solid foundation for this 900 million customers individual retail service.

This retail service is covering a very large range of customers. It can be regarded as the most comprehensive, the largest inclusive finance.

We need to make our most effort to serve our customers to make sure that development of finance can benefit more customers. More specifically, we need to have a very solid manner taking to develop the elderly care-related financial service.

Also, we are going to pay more attention to other aspects of social welfare. The brand of elderly care finance of ABC is called Nongyin Yanglao, which means the elderly care of Agricultural Bank of China, and we are going to make our efforts to build a comprehensive system of the elderly care-related financial service in different branches of different areas of the country to provide more people with high-quality elderly care.

We will continue to improve the quality of the financial services to the senior population. We will also help improve the multi-tiered and multi-pillar old age insurance system and optimize individual pension accounts.

One card, one code to control the direct sales financial products and services so that more people can enjoy a quality life in old age. At the same time, we'll continue to deepen the service platforms such as the Golden Rice Bowl restaurant, actively explore financial innovation in the elderly care scenario, and strengthen cooperation with the government, elderly care institutions, elderly care associations to build an integrated ecosystem of finance and life.

Next, we will further refine customer group services with more accurate data labels, customer portraits, and more suitable cooperation for doctor package to meet the diverse needs of elder care customers in differentiated manner. The So, now the whole bank is fully promoting the one-thing after that for individuals' financial convenient services, and we can provide the one-stop scenario.

Also, we can utilize the customer service, the business outlets to facilitate customers to submit materials and withdraw funds. Also, we use financial services to nourish the fertile soil of the rural revitalization.

In this regard, we'll continuously optimize and improve the platform for full-scenario services in rural revitalization and strive to provide a door-to-door services for the pioneer team. We have about more than 20,000 pioneer teams serving rural areas to provide door-to-door services, and we will use the strategy to improve the environment.

We also focus on We will focus on the one township, one product. We will try to explore to find explore the new pathway of rural services, and we have felt very vividly, and we realize that in individual loans and business loans, why can rural household loans be achieved?

Overall, they are very stable, the risks are well-controlled. The an important reason is that we go deep into the front lines to truly understand the unique features and also the development needs in different regions.

That is what we call one county, one product; one town, one product; one village, one product. These are crucial for us to sell in rural household loans and business loans, and they are of great help.

Thirdly, we should take effective measures to support the development of small and micro enterprises. We should adhere to benefiting both enterprises and the people, and regularly implement the coordination mechanism to support the financing of small and micro enterprises, which we have been in help and support.

We should also do a job in the inclusive finance, and the focus is on parks, wholesale markets, core business districts, and other chains to further optimize the service and process for customers in these scenarios, strengthen the support of technology and integrated deployment, digital operations to better meet the needs of small and micro business owners, including the financial needs of individual businesses. The second focus is to build the core competitiveness of consumer finance and ignite a new engine for boosting domestic demand.

ABC actively responds to the national policies to expand domestic demand and boost consumption, actively implements the 14th Five-Year Plan for expanding consumption, and the work requirements and deployments in it. We will support and expand consumer financial services as a top priority, committed to expanding the coverage of third-party payment services.

Adhere to the the dual approach of scenarios and ecosystems with a wire line for consumption scenarios and support will depend the cooperation with e-commerce platforms, retail enterprises, and carry out various forms of activities to boost the consumption. In this process, we'll focus on promoting the ecosystem, dual scenarios, constantly enriching high-frequency scenarios, and expanding the types of comprehensive financial services.

We will reduce the cost for clients to access services, at the same time, through high-frequency scenarios, we will drive low-frequency financial needs. Just to provide the clients with a more comprehensive financial service ecosystem that understands them better.

Secondly, we will step up personal credit services. In this regard, one on the one hand, we'll stabilize and expand traditional consumption.

We'll fully promote the trading credit services, focusing on automobiles, home appliances, and home improvement sector, and actively provide support for scenarios of smart electronic products and services. At the same time, we'll continuously enhance elderly care consumption, focusing on childcare, culture, and tourism consumption, provide precise supply in these service consumption area, actively supporting digital consumption, and green consumption and the development of new business scenarios.

In this process, we attach great importance to, and earnestly implement the consumption loan discount policy of the financial department in accordance with the principles of accuracy, compliance, and customer convenience to increase the lending of consumption loans and effectively turn the policy dividend of the state into measures to boost the consumption and help people's livelihood. In the first half of this year, the bank's personal housing consumption loans, and vehicles loans reached 258.9 billion yuan, 1.45 trillion yuan, and 2.2 trillion yuan respectively.

The credit card consumption exceeded 1 trillion yuan, was ranking among the best in the industry. The third focus is to safeguard the AUM of over 25 trillion yuan and set a new benchmark for wealth management.

In this regard, we will firmly aim for common prosperity, and remain true to the role as trusted family financial planners. We'll celebrate We will accelerate the high-quality development of wealth management business of individuals.

Farmers' Wealth is a brand of ABC wealth management. Our pension business is called ABC Pension.

We've decided to name our wealth management business ABC Wealth. The One focus is on product supply with a continuous emphasis on the supply-side reform, leveraging the advantage of group synergy and resources integration, adhering to the principle of reasonable expectations and qualified delivery, and making efforts to close innovation and selection to drive the transformation of the wealth product show from focusing on categories to emphasizing high quality, willing to create a product matrix that is distinctive and of high quality.

Second, we'll focus on service innovation to meet the financial management needs of clients throughout their lifestyle life cycle, enabling one-stop service and provide a more professional and a warm wealth management experience. Number three is on the differentiated advantage.

We'll develop our differentiated advantages. We will use digital solutions to gain deeper insights, provide wealth consultation, and build smart asset allocation capabilities so as to provide more accessible services and expand the coverage of wealth management services.

Also, we will further focus on the management of wealth for the customers in rural areas. Fourthly, we will further develop our 20,000 branches, create a better life for everyone.

On the one hand, we will provide integrated services to our clients, adhering to the concept of one client, one bank, and improve our retail business. The first is to strengthen the development of communities, enterprises, and merchants around our branches, and other client groups.

We're building ecosystem financial services at the branch. The second is to rely on platform, such as mobile banking, and we come to provide convenient financial services to clients, will also improve online services.

The third is to actively explore an online to offline integrated digital business model, which is not simply telemarketing. The essence of our work is to drive with data and precisely understand the needs and insights of the clients, and come up with matching products and services or channels to the client, so as to realize the financialization of bank's data assets.

These three aspects, I think, are all playing very important role. For example, in our third aspect, digital operations for the these young people, they understand technology and science and technology through training, they also understand finance.

Through training, they also understand very good financial business knowledge. Our good retail branches, large banks, strong banks, one is the data account manager.

His business performance can probably reach the business performance of 1.2 outlets. We also realize that the construction of these three runways for the future development of ABC's retail technology will provide strong impetus.

On the one hand, it is very important that we effectively strengthen the protection of consumers' rights and interests as the fundamental requirement of implementing the critical nature of financial work. We vigorously promote the management, sales, and protection of the entire bank and the construction of the pattern of the entire bank responsible for consumer protection work.

We spare no effort to build a listening platform and smooth the opinion of customers and the front-line employee and feedback channels. Through this listening platform, our front-line employees and account managers, if they have any work suggestions or work feedback or some opinions, it can be directly pushed to the head office.

The head office has a dedicated team to sort it out to study and decompose, to adopt the reasonable suggestions. At the same time, we will strengthen the source, the source governance.

The key is to track these feelings of the uh ideology, systematic mechanism, management process, system control, and team quality, and thoroughly trace back to the source of the information data. Timely complaints should be in place and address the demands of needs of the people.

We should also increase on innovation and efficiency through online and offline channels to popularize financial knowledge and enhance the public's financial knowledge. Given the characteristic of retail business, its work content and and we in future, we as always, stick to the philosophy of serving the people with financial service, forging core capabilities, demonstrating a sense of responsibility to achieving stronger service capability, deeper customer cooperation, lower risk cost, and a more balanced business structure, so as to meet the growing need of customers for a better life.

Thank you very much for the detailed sharing of the plan. Now let's welcome the next question.

Thank you very much, management team. My question is about inclusive finance.

From the semi report, we can see inclusive finance has developed very rapidly and very good, and continue to lead the industry. I want to ask about

how to sustain the development of inclusive finance. Thank you very much.

I will invite Governor Wang to answer the question.

Thank you very much for the question. Since the beginning of this year, we utilized the opportunity from the 15th Five-Year Plan to deepen the development strategy of rural areas, farmers, and promote the development of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Inclusive finance work had achieved remarkable results. In the first half year, the inclusive finance loan balance is 4.88 trillion.

Also the increase of 532.2 billion yuan of increase, and also a lot of new increase in terms of this SME customer-related inclusive financial services. For the first step, we are going to do the four things.

We are going to be deeply integrated to the general development of our country's plan, and we are going to follow the guidance of the 15th Five-Year development plan of our economy, especially we are seizing the opportunity related to the cutting-edge technology development and future industry development, and also the upgrading of traditional industries. We are going to focus more on the modernization of certain industries, which will all be the foundation of our innovation for the inclusive financial services.

What we will do is to create the financial services which are in line with the economic development and the market demand. At the same time, we are going to make full use of the policy and monetary tools.

This year, there has been a new financial tools created by the central government and the central financial and fiscal coordination mechanism, which can promote domestic demand-related policies and and all other related lists of policies to help the SMEs in terms of subsidies for their loans. ABC is going to make full use of such policy tools in to reduce the risk and to innovate the service-related products and to make the operation process of all businesses more smooth and to expand the development space for inclusive finance.

At the same time, we are going to also give full play to this mechanism to coordinate the financing of SMEs, and we are going to make full use of this platform which provide us with the information related to the financial credit of SMEs for the further stable, legal, compliance development. Also, at the same time, thirdly, we are going to promote the digital development and transformation of inclusive finance.

On the one hand, we are going to promote the in-depth piloting of digital transformation of inclusive financial services, and at the same time, we on this pilots, we are going to create more high-quality products which can promote the digital technology-based financial inclusive services. At the same time, we need to explore the possibility for us to use like AI agents and other technologies in precisely control the service process and to optimize our business operation and to control the risks.

Fourthly, at the same time, we will pay special attention to the control of risks, legal compliance issues, and to explore and to carefully study the new policies related to the risk control. We will build a group of talents who can help to strengthen the source of all the risk control and to have an online and offline integrated comprehensive system which can control the risks, and we are going to iterate more newer models of risk control and have a timely supervision and emergency alerting system for us to control the risk.

Looking ahead into the remaining of the year, we are going to have a stable path for us for further development, and we are going to follow the guidance by the supervision organizations to have a stable investment and optimize the structure of development. In order to achieve that, we are going to improve the inclusive financial system quality both in terms of its quantity and in terms of its efficiency, which can better stimulate the vitality of the market and improve the high-quality development of the society and people's livelihood.

Thank you, Mr. Wang, for the answer.

Now let's give the floor to another question from a participant online. Please have your question.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. I'm from JPMorgan, I'm Huang Ziyang.

The question is related to AI. Are there any measures for ABC to apply AI in your businesses?

For your next step, what will be your main focuses to make efforts to integrate AI more into your future operation?

Thank you for this question related to deepening the use of AI. In fact, since the start of this year, ABC has achieved a lot, especially in the smart banking sector building.

The smart banking is based on our development of the AI agent, and it's led by the demand of real programs. We have continued to improve the use of AI at a large range and at a high quality, and we have achieved the four results in four aspects.

The first of all is we have accelerated the innovation in terms of digital-based development of our businesses, and we have accelerated a lot of digital-based process, and also this whole digital process have helped us to make the operation process more smoothly and help us in the application for credit for our customers. At the same time, AI is helping us to expand the channel of customers.

We have the 11.2 version of their personal mobile bank for our individual customers, and which can provide our users with more scenarios of financial services. By the end of June, our mobile bank users have exceeded 280 million, and that is leading in all banks of China.

Also, we are improving our all kinds of digital operation capabilities for different types of customers. At the same time, we are using AI for risk control.

For credit-related risks, we pay special attention to the supervision of risk in terms of any kind of inclusive financial services. Also, we have promoted the upgrading the smart upgrading of the whole process of inclusive finance, and also using AI to empower our process to deal with the risky assets.

Also, we are using AI for more scenarios, and such application involves the entry of all clients into the system, the tracking of their background, the risk control, and also the risk supervision in the financial process. Thirdly, at the same time, we have used AI to lower the burden of our branches, especially the foundation-level organizations.

We have this so-called ABC Claw, which is the ABC version of open claw, and this ABC Claw is helping our staff in all kinds of scenarios, for example, in identifying the green loan and in categorizing different types of loans. Also, we have created this Yiming, which is the AI assistant of ABC, and we have also created this smart brain which can help us to identify the situation of a very large range and to deal with the difficulties and to provide solutions for all kinds of cases in different scenarios.

At the same time, we are using AI in more on-spot situations, like for a lot of businesses related to credit card, they can use AI to call for help and to deal with the situation. At the same time, AI is providing us at some very fundamental level provide us with very fundamental support.

Like AI is giving us very high-quality database and to help us to have the structural transformation of our database and to empower our business operation, and also help us to create the knowledge bank of our ABC organization. At the same time, we have improved our whole matrix of AI tools.

We have introduced the DeepSeek, Qianwen, and other large language model into our system, which has helped to improve our AI capacity to a trillion level, trillion data level. In our next step, we are going to continue to improve the quality and efficiency of AI agents.

We are going to do the following things: first is to deepen the use of AI agents in all kinds of scenarios and to create a long-term mechanism for us to use the AI agents in different ways; and second, we are going to continue to strengthen the support of AI at fundamental level. We are going to use AI to build to further build our fundamental brands and to create solutions for all kinds of situations on the cycle of financial service; and thirdly, we should always stick to our bottom line, our red line, which is the risk control.

We will always control the risk related to AI management, because the large language models, they are changing so fast, there will be some risks like the black box, the illusions of the AI. We are going to deal with these problems, and we are going to manage the scenarios based on categorization to make sure that AI is stable and controllable.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Wang, for answering the smart banking building of ABC.

Now let's give the floor to this lady on the left.

Thank you. I'm from 21st Century Economic Newspaper.

We found that from the situation of 2025, the total proportion of bound and stocking financing has exceeded loans in terms of the financing for agriculture. My question is, for ABC, what will be your strategy for your future investment, and what will be the return on the investment for like securities in the future?

Thank you for the question. Let's give the floor to Mr.

Lin.

Thank you for the question. Actually, in terms of the security business of ABC, we can conclude it in the following sentences.

We have pay much attention to the high-quality development of securities. Secondly is we have always understand that we need to follow the general trend of economic development and have a solid foundation.

Third is we have always improved our trading capacity. Fourthly is that we have expanded our scale of service in terms of investment of securities.

Fifthly is that we have a very high level of revenue contribution made by securities. By the end of June, there is this revenue of 17.85 trillion, that is a year-on-year growth of 1.5 trillion yuan compared to the previous year.

If you look at the structure, long-term ones, including the 5-year or more bonds, have a large proportion, and the ABC is having a relatively lower cost of holding, and also we are having a higher level of capacity of lowering the risk and and a higher capacity potential. Looking into the second half of the year, we can say that ABC is having a very adequate storage and preparation, and we have a systematic capacity to deal with the risks in the system, and such capacity and preparation can help us to deal with the fluctuation in interest risks.

If we look at the overall market, we have to admit that the entire revenue level is relatively low, and the yield curve for bonds is holding a is showing a very fluctuated one, and we also know that the holding period of bonds, the appreciation in bond values and the trading opportunities is contributing to increasing the return on bond investment. That's our expectation for the coming next year.

We know this year is the beginning of the 15th Five-Year Plan of our country, and ABC, as the major bank of China and also as the fundamental and most important agriculture-related bank of China, we are going to seize this opportunity and we are going to make full use of our position as a major bank of China, and we are going to follow the policy, the monetary policy and the fiscal policy of our country, and to improve the efficiency of financial market development. For our next step, we are going to follow this the the bank's whole overall plan for the allocation of assets and have a flexible allocation of all kinds of securities and to safeguard this bottom line of security.

There are actually two aspects of future security investment that we need to pay attention to. The first is we need to have this judgment of future possible situations.

We need to know that because now there is this outside environment and geopolitical dangerous, and also the US Fed and the EU, they are having all kinds of measures that we need to pay attention to. For the second half of the year, we need to maintain a relatively stable attitude because the fiscal and monetary policy will remain relatively stable for the second half of the year.

The Fed and Central Bank of Europe had the possibility of increasing interest rate, and with the overall market liquidity and the fluctuation of the currency market will be around the interest rate. All this had impact on our overall operation.

In terms of RMB securities, we will continue to spend the evaluation of the security market, to improve the refined management. We also have comprehensive operation of the indicators in order to establish the main structure, sensing the hike of the market.

In terms of the size of the investment, we maintain the relatively positive allocation strategy, and the growth rate of the security portfolio can be appropriately higher than the growth rate of the entire market. In terms of baseline selection, we choose the mutual maturity strategy in order to ensure the growth of the portfolio maturity.

Also, we will emphasize the optimization of account allocation in order to better seize the market fluctuation opportunities, and prepare for the dynamic adjustment. The second aspect is that with the fluctuation in overseas markets, we will adhere to a prudent duration and scale strategy and coordinate asset returns and risk prevention and control, and steadily carry out investments in overseas bound.

Thirdly, for offshore RMB securities, we will follow the trend of RMB internationalization, actively carry out the investments in offshore RMB securities and better serve the high-level opening up of finance. This is the first aspect, to strengthen the forward-looking research and steadily carry out the securities investment business.

The second aspect of this strategy is to focus on our main responsibilities to empower the real economy, increase quality and efficiency. One aspect is to focus on serving the construction of a modern industrial system.

We will increase support for the implementation of our major national strategies and the development of security capabilities in key areas, with a focus on serving transportation, electricity, and energy, among others, as well as industries vital to the national economy and people's livelihood. In this regard, we will further increase the allocation of high-quality industrial bonds.

The second is to focus on the five key areas of financial services and key areas related to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers. We actively issue green bonds, bonds for technological innovation, with a focus on increasing support for green finance, scientific and technological innovation, and the industry.

We also increase investment in bonds related to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers. We will increase support for rural entities and bonds.

Let me give you one example, like Agricultural Development Bank of China, when they issue bonds, we will maintain an appropriate level of support. We'll work together to strengthen rural revitalization.

Thank you very much for the question. Now, let's give one opportunity to online participant.

I will read the question. ABC has achieved some good results in fintech.

What are some good practices? Recently, non-equity investment has become a new force in the market.

How does your bank enhance its alternative financial service capabilities through equity investments? That's a very good question.

Let's invite Vice Governor Wang Dajun to answer the question.

Thank you for the question. Fintech is very important, and ranks first among the five major articles of finance.

It is an important part of cultivating new productivity, achieving high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and self-improvement, and building a country with strong science and technology and a strong financial country. ABC firmly implements the decisions and arrangements of CPC Central Committee, and takes technology or fintech as its important strategic task.

It continues to build a specialized characteristic service system, and strives to improve the quality and efficiency of of high-tech of fintech services, and it has served over 360,000 tech enterprises with a loan growth rate of tech enterprises, small and medium-sized tech enterprises leading the industry. I want to use a few keywords to explain the feature.

The first one is the specialized, meaning very professional. The service system is very professional.

We have set up a techno fintech team at both the head office and branches, and established technology fintech service center in various innovation hubs, creating a three-tier professional organizational structure involving fintech department and specialized branches, and focus on cultivating a team of professionals who understand the industry, technology, and finance. In the first half of this year, we closely followed the national strategy to expand the scope of science and technology innovation centers, achieving full coverage of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta region, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, as well as 26 key cities in other regions.

Second, innovative credit policies to adapt to the characteristics of technology-based enterprises, which are high-tech, high-risk, and asset-light. We've broken through the traditional credit evaluation model and developed differentiated credit products for different life cycle, such as start-up, growth, and mature period, focusing on innovation and growth attributes, and take the lead in introducing the guidance of a scientific science and technology finance credit policy.

Also, we try to make sure the models are well-matching the need of fintech. Number three is the comprehensive product service across all scenarios.

For the entire innovation chain, the entire lifecycle of its business growth, and all of financial demand scenarios, the head office and branches are committed to building a full range from tech talent to tech enterprises, from credit to equity, debt, lease, insurance, and wealth management service system. Also, we have formulated online and offline financial products and services.

We For example, the head office launched a convenient online products, Kejie Loan, for small and medium micro tech enterprises. Recently, they innovatively promoted the R&D loan, and in Zhejiang, Shanghai, and other places, the talent loans serving AI companies, etc., which are widely welcomed by the market.

In the first half of the year, the number of tech companies with loans in the bank exceeded 34,000, ranking among the best in the industry. Fourthly, an integrated tech innovation ecosystem, guided by the financial needs of tech companies, we focus on leveraging internal and external synergy and build an innovation service ecosystem.

Externally, we collaborated with government departments, research institutes, venture capital firms, etc., to establish an innovation alliance and establish a mechanism for mutual learning and risk-sharing. We upgraded ABC Chuangda technology financial service solution, and jointly implemented requirements of investing early, investing in small businesses, investing for the long term, and investing in hard technology, business intelligence, digital platform tools.

We deepened AI-plus applications, AI-plus financial applications, and focused on building industrial financial service platform. This is our own characteristic.

We will form a modern industrial system in key areas and build an industrial client map to integrate internal and external data from multiple dimensions, embed intelligent evaluation models, and achieve precise client profiling, dynamic monitoring. As for the second question, we know that equity investment can be done through market guidance, sharing risks, and leveraging synergy in fintech.

It played a very important role in recent years in accordance with the strategic deployment and requirement of the regulators. We actively and steadily promote the AIC pilot program and continuously improve investment management capabilities to empower and enhance the quality of technology finance.

Specifically, we focus on three areas. First, focus on key areas.

We support the industrial development in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. We strive to achieve full coverage of venture capital VC fund establishment in the 18 pilot cities.

In the first half of the year, several investment projects were accelerated and landed, and a number of projects that have passed the listing review or started the listing counseling and filing of high-quality enterprises have been reserved. Second, we will focus on the field of hard technology.

We will always adhere to the path of specialization and focus on the emerging and the future industries in the 14th Five-Year Plan and the construction of modern industrial system, and conducting in-depth research on specific areas, striving to see clearly, invest accurately, invest well, and keep up. Thirdly, we focus on investing early, investing small, and investing for long term.

As the ABC Group has a extensive channels and a large client base, and it has obvious advantages in inclusive financing and technology finance, ABC investments can leverage these group advantages to accurately select industrial tracks and recommend high-quality projects for technology companies in the seed and start-up stages, to provide seed capital and accompany early-stage technology company with patient capital, helping them go through growth cycles and providing integrated services, including equity investment, loan, lease, and consulting to help them grow stronger. During the 15th Five-Year Plan, ABC will continue to focus on technology finance, fintech, making it a top priority in its strategy, and focus on supporting technological innovation across the chain, and also build a main force for the development of fintech.

Thank you very much for the sharing of fintech. Now let's welcome the next question.

Thank you very much, moderator. My question is about the dividend distribution.

Governor Wang introduced that the cash dividend distribution percentage will increase to 31% from 30%, which reflects the importance of ABC attaches to how to stabilize the dividend ratio in the future and better reward investors. Thank you.

Thank you very much for the question. Let's invite the Board Secretary to answer the question.

In order to enhance the investors' sense of gain, the dividend distribution percentage increased to 31% from 30%. The ABC yielded meeting had proposed the distribution of interim dividend for 2026 to all shareholders, which is RMB 1.297 yuan per 10 shares.

Enhancing investors' returns is important requirement of enhancing the resilience and the confidence of the capital market. ABC will further implement the concept of putting investors first, and strive to enhance investors' returns, and our work mainly focus on the following three aspects.

First, we will still focus on our core business to consolidate the foundation for value return. In recent years, ABC has always taken high-quality development as the main theme and a balanced and the scale, quality, and efficiency of development.

Just now, Governor Wang had shared with us that the net profit of ABC had leading the industry in for six consecutive years. Looking into the future, we will have more high-quality services, main business services provided.

Secondly, the second thing we do is that we will have a long-term high-quality information exposure. We believe this is very important for our relationship, our trust relationship with the investors.

What we will do is, on the one hand, in terms of the main business information disclosure like the strategic and financial service information disclosure, we will strengthen the yeah, we will strengthen what we do in expose more related information. At the same time, we will have more diversified information disclosed and also to respond to the suggestions and the calls of our investors to answer to the market.

At the same time, the Agricultural Bank of China will have a sustainable way of development and to safeguard the sustainable value of our investors. Since the public listing of ABC of 2021, there has been a 12% and 11% of the A-share and H-share stock of return for investors of ABC.

In 2023, the number have reached 34% and 36%, so that is the number, the statistics. At the same time, we have always paid back our investors with high level of dividend.

We have remained the level of dividend above 30%, and the whole dividend amount more than 987.2 billion RMB, and that is a stable and sustainable return for our investments. We are also going to have more options like the the intermediate profit distribution to each shareholders of and other measures.

In the future, we are going to have more diversified ways to maintain this high level of dividend return and the interest return to share the results of the development with all of our investors.

We have had very thorough discussion today, and due to time limits, we will have the floor open to the last question. Please give the microphone to this madam.

Thank you directors for this very precious opportunity to be the last one to ask questions. I'm from CICC, I'm Zhang Jinyang.

We have noticed that in recent years, ABC is having very good business performance and creating a lot of dividend and return for the shareholders. Behind such great results, there must have been a lot of strategic planning and very efficient implementation of strategies.

Here I would like to ask, what will be the key areas of development for ABC in the 15th Five-Year Plan of China's economy?

Thank you for the question. I'm going to answer your question.

Just as you have said, in the 14th Five-Year Plan, ABC has achieved a very great business performance results. Just just as you've said, this has a lot to do with the strategic planning of us at the beginning of the 14th Five-Year Plan period of China, and also our precise implementation of this plan.

In the 15th Five-Year Plan period, we believe this is a very important period for our country's economy to have a solid foundation of economic development and high-quality and speedy economic development. On this very important time point, we are going to follow the guideline and the policy of our Central Party Committee and our central government, and ABC is also having our own 15th Five-Year Plan.

We have already submitted that to our Board of Directors for the review. During the 15th Five-Year Plan of ABC, according to our plan, we are going to implement the socialism idea with the new era's characteristics, and also to serve the people and to serve the real economy, and to have the reform and innovation as our main driving force, and to follow the guidance of our Party and to strictly strictly follow the policies.

Our goal is to serve the agriculture, rural area, and rural residents, and to serve the people, and to be a bank of inclusive financial services. In this way for China to improve its national capacity with financial development, we want to make our own contribution in this new chapter.

There will be some measures taken. We will put the leadership of our Party and of the political ideas at the center of our development.

The leadership of the CPC will be implemented into all steps of our company and our bank's development and management. The ideas and ideologies will be our tools for high-quality management of our bank, and also anti-corruption work is very important for our bank.

We are going to follow the anti-corruption measures taken by our Party. At the same time, we are going to stick to our main business.

We will always have this goal of being the leading bank in rural revitalization, and we will put the service of the agriculture, rural residents, rural area in the core of our businesses, and to make our own contribution for the modernization of agriculture and the rural areas. We will improve the quality of the daily inclusive financial services for agriculture and the rural area, and also we will have more innovative mechanism for the agriculture and the rural area, and also promote the county-level business development steadily.

At the same time, we are going to be led by the new ideas and patterns of development, and we are going to pay special attention to the key areas and the weak areas, and to provide them with enough financial support. We are going to improve the six six network building and to provide the strategic support for the strategic industries, and we are going to give priorities to the five main chapters of financial development, and we are going to improve the international development of financial service sector and high-quality development of financial sector.

In addition, we hope our financial service can help our people. We want to serve the people, and we hope that because we have the advantage with the widest coverage of customers, and we want to make full use of that advantage to benefit the people and to improve the livelihood of the people and the welfare, social welfare of the people, and to provide more diversified financial services to different groups of customers, to introduce more diversified financial services and products to every household, and to improve the life quality of Chinese people.

Fifthly, we want to build this intelligent bank, smart bank, for a future high-quality development of our financial services. We will integrate the AI and other technologies into our existing business and to create a new ecosystem which human efforts and machine efforts and AI efforts can be coordinated for our digital transformation.

We will have the AI to lead the change in paradigm of our digital finance and to create new competitive advantages for us in the new era. Sixthly, we will stick to the path of stable development, and we will always put the risk control as the main topic of our financial services, put it at the core, and to create a comprehensive system to innovate the tools and measures to improve our ways for long-term and ahead-looking risk control measures.

We need to improve our new ways of risk control in this new era of technology, because new security high security level is very important for high-quality development. That's our plan.

For the next step, we are going to implement all the plans, to put all things into solid work, to change to turn the blueprint into a real scenery and to make our own contribution for the 15th Five-Year Plan of our country. That's my answer.

Thank you very much, Mr. Wang, for the answer.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your participation in this 2026 interim results announcement of Agricultural Bank of China. I also want to thank all the investors, analysts, and journalists for your long-term attention to ABC's development, and I also want to thank the director team.

Thank you for under the guidance of Mr. Wang, thank you for sharing with us your experience.

In the future, if you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask our team and the department for further information. That's the end for today's meeting and today's announcement.

Thank you very much.