Over one trillion yuan in loans are due, and banks are facing a major test on the asset side.

"The loan interest rates have already dropped to around 2%, but customers are still choosing to issue bonds for financing." Lin Xin, a corporate business professional from a joint-stock bank in East China, told reporters that this year's biggest headache is not "unable to lend out loans", but "unable to retain loans". After the massive amount of deposits matured, the banking industry is facing another wave of massive loan maturities - according to institutional estimates, the scale of loan maturities in 2026 is expected to exceed 104 trillion yuan. Recent surveys of multiple joint-stock banks, city commercial banks, and rural commercial banks by reporters have found that frontline bank employees are already feeling the pressure: on one hand, there is an increase in the difficulty of refinancing existing loans, and on the other, high-quality enterprises are accelerating their shift towards issuing bonds for financing.