The number of employees in 24 listed banks increased by more than 9,600, and technology talents were in demand

Reporter Yang Jingxin reports from Beijing

Recently, in the CCTV hit drama "City in the City", Tao Wuji, a newcomer to the bank, complained to Zhao Hui, vice president of the bank, about the difficulties and helplessness of young tellers' loans, and the story of finally taking the blame for bad debts, which made many bank practitioners break their defenses.

For a while, the topic of "Why do young people want to escape from bank tellers?" also rushed to the hot search and sparked heated discussions on the Internet. At the same time, the pressure of performance appraisal and salary cuts for grassroots employees have also made many bank employees complain. However, this does not mean that the number of bank employees has plummeted.

According to the reporter of "China Business Daily", in the current employment environment, although the salary of many banks has been reduced, the number of bank employees has not decreased as a whole. As of April 25, the total number of employees of the 24 listed banks that have published their annual reports approached 2.38 million, an increase of 9,650 year-on-year. Among them, the number of employees at the end of 2023 in the six large state-owned banks decreased by 4,156 compared with the beginning of the year, but the number of employees in joint-stock banks, small and medium-sized city commercial banks, and rural commercial banks increased significantly. It is worth mentioning that the continuous expansion of the IT and fintech talent teams of many banks, and the continuous optimization of branches and grassroots positions, have led to a rapid increase in the salary costs of some banks.

The number of employees of large state-owned banks "increased four times and decreased twice"

According to public information statistics, as of the end of 2023, the total number of employees in the six major state-owned banks was 1.8455 million, a decrease of 4,156 compared with the same period in 2022. Among them, the Agricultural Bank of China (601288. SH) had the largest number of employees among large state-owned banks, reaching 45,100, a year-on-year decrease of 1,255. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (601398. SH) saw the largest decrease in the number of employees, from 427,600 to 419,300, a year-on-year decrease of 8,335. China Construction Bank (601939. SH), Bank of China (601988. SH), Bank of Communications (601328. SH) and the Postal Savings Bank (601658.SH) had 376,900, 306,900, 94,300 and 197,100 employees, respectively, an increase of 189, 749, 2,452 and 2,044 year-on-year.

ICBC said that it will focus on high-quality development, focus on key areas of business development and market competition, strengthen the allocation of human resources in strategic places, and promote the improvement of business capabilities by improving the quality and efficiency of human resources. Focusing on key areas such as scientific and technological innovation, green development, emerging business, inclusive finance, and digital transformation, we will continue to promote the construction of teams in marketing, credit, science and technology, and data, improve the training, introduction, incentive, and use of talents, and strive to build a high-level financial team that meets the requirements of building a financial power. Accelerate the empowerment of scientific and technological data, optimize the functional setting of institutions, improve the development mechanism of front-line employees, and stimulate the vitality and momentum of talents.

The Agricultural Bank of China said that it actively implemented the national employment priority policy and recruited more than 32,000 people throughout the year. At the same time, the bank strengthened the construction of the talent team in the new era, and promoted the implementation of a series of major talent projects and special talent plans. Among them, the bank implemented the "Rural Revitalization Special Recruitment Plan" to increase the recruitment of college students majoring in agriculture, and implemented the "Financial Talent in the County to Help Towns and Villages to Enrich the People", and more than 3,500 people went to local governments for temporary posts.

The Postal Savings Bank said that in 2023, it will further deepen and improve the "U Series" talent introduction and training program, and organically integrate talent recruitment, talent training, and internal mobility. In terms of the number of talents, the scale of personnel should be reasonably controlled, and the idea of talent allocation should shift from quantitative growth to per capita efficiency improvement. In terms of talent structure, the distribution of positions has become more reasonable, and human resources have further flowed to core business areas and front-end marketing positions in an orderly manner.

"The strategy of the big state-owned banks in human resource management is to stabilize the total number of employees and adjust the structure. Vigorously introduce all kinds of talents, and then match talents with the bank's development strategy. A person from a major state-owned bank said.

Some people in the country's major banks believe that in the process of the gradual sinking of the layout of the outlets of the state-owned banks, the number of county-level outlets has increased, and the number of grassroots employees will also increase. "Every year, large state-owned banks will have a fixed recruitment plan, and most new employees need to go to the counter for more than a year to exercise, which is also a necessary grassroots experience for talents in promotion. ”

Expansion of small and medium-sized banks

Compared with large state-owned banks, joint-stock banks and small and medium-sized local banks will have varying degrees of growth in the number of bank employees in 2023.

According to public information statistics, as of April 25, the number of employees at the end of 2023 reached 427,000 for the seven joint-stock banks that have announced their 2023 results, a year-on-year increase of 9,043, while the number of employees at the end of 2023 for the 11 small and medium-sized local banks was 106,800, a year-on-year increase of 4,763.

Among the joint-stock banks, China Merchants Bank (600036. SH), Industrial Bank (601166. SH), China CITIC Bank (601998. SH), China Everbright Bank (601818. SH), Minsheng Bank (600016. SH), Ping An Bank (000001. SZ) and Zheshang Bank (601916.SH) have 116,500, 66,600, 66,900, 47,600, 63,700, 42,800 and 22,900 employees in 2023, respectively. Among them, the number of employees in China CITIC Bank increased the most, reaching 5,788, while the number of employees in Industrial Bank decreased the most, reaching 3,271.

Among the 11 small and medium-sized local banks, only 3 banks will have a decline in the number of employees in 2023, while the remaining 8 banks will have increased the number of employees to varying degrees. According to the data, Bank of Ningbo (002142. SZ), Bank of Beijing (601169. SH) and Bank of Hangzhou (600926.SH) will have 29,200, 19,500 and 13,800 employees in 2023, an increase of 2,143, 1,465 and 560 respectively, while Chongqing Rural Commercial (601077. SH), Ruifeng Bank (601528. SH) and Jiangyin Bank (002807.SZ) saw a slight decrease in the number of employees.

A person from a city commercial bank said: "The development of small and medium-sized banks is still in the period of scale expansion, and the number of employees in banks will increase accordingly. However, in order to reduce costs and increase efficiency, some small and medium-sized banks have also outsourced labor services, handing over some auxiliary positions to dispatched personnel. In addition, there are big differences in the business operations of different local banks, and for the stronger head city commercial banks, they are more vigorous in the introduction of talents, and they are more willing to pay more costs to pave the way for business development. However, there are also a few banks that control costs by cutting salaries and laying off employees in order to achieve profit growth through throttling. ”

Increase the introduction of talents

According to Wind statistics, the total salary of 13 national commercial banks in 2023 will be 869.668 billion yuan, an increase of only 2.32% compared with the same period in 2022, and the increase is lower than the increase in 2022 (5.85%). In terms of per capita income, the per capita income of most banks has been stable and declining.

The reporter learned that although many banks will adjust their employee salaries in 2023, most banks will not reduce their employee salary expenses, and even some banks' expenditures in this area will grow rapidly, which means that the structural adjustment of salaries has been tilted.

According to China CITIC Bank's 2023 annual report, the bank's employee compensation payable was 22.42 billion yuan, a slight increase from 21.905 billion yuan in 2022. The bank stated that it adheres to the remuneration concept of focusing on job value, performance contribution and ability performance, continuously optimizes the salary distribution mechanism with value creation as the core, continuously improves the internal income distribution structure, increases the tilt of salary resources to front-line employees and grassroots employees, gives full play to the positive incentive role of salary, continuously promotes the bank's strategic development and implements various regulatory requirements.

The situation at IB is more intuitive. The bank's 2023 annual report shows that the number of bank employees has decreased by more than 3,000 compared to 2022, but the bank's expenditure under employee compensation payable has increased slightly. IB made it clear that the performance remuneration of the company's employees is linked to the comprehensive performance of the bank, the institution (department) and the individual, and in terms of the setting of performance evaluation indicators, the evaluation results are related to the evaluation of the institution's management team and the performance distribution in terms of financial efficiency, development and transformation, customer construction, risk compliance, social responsibility and other dimensions. The performance pay of individual employees is linked to the performance level of the team, and the degree of contribution of the individual to the team is fully considered. The compensation level is matched with the overall performance performance, and employees are motivated to continuously improve the performance level and value creation.

The reporter learned that the bank has increased the introduction of talents. For example, among the large state-owned banks, the increase in information technology and financial technology-related personnel is more obvious. The number of fintech employees in the six major state-owned banks increased to 94,900, an increase of more than 7,500 or 8.59% over 2022.

According to the 2023 annual report of China Merchants Bank, the composition of employees is 19,746 in corporate finance, 52,843 in retail finance, 6,844 in risk management, 17,377 in operation and management, and 10,650 in R&D personnel. Compared with 2022, the number of corporate finance, retail finance, operation and management personnel has increased, while the number of risk management line personnel, R&D personnel and administrative and logistics personnel has decreased.

"In 2023, many banks have proposed strategies to reduce costs and increase efficiency, tilting human resources towards front-end business and technical personnel. The future competition of banks is the competition of talents, and many banks have also released talent strategies. The salary of technology talents needs to be more attractive than that of traditional grassroots employees, which is why most banks have increased their investment in technology for digital transformation. A person from a joint-stock bank believes.

The person from the joint-stock bank said that due to the wide application of financial technology, some of the bank's back-office work can be replaced at present, which makes the bank have some adjustments in the matching of human resources. "It is obvious that some banks have built a relatively complete intelligent risk control system, and the risk prevention and control of the business has been digitized and intelligent, which has also reduced the demand for risk control personnel and achieved real cost reduction and efficiency increase. ”