Dear investors, and analysts, and friends from the media community, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. A big welcome to the 2021 Annual Results Announcement of CCB, and also a big thank you to all of you for your care and support for CCB. Because of the COVID control and prevention needs, this announcement will take the form of conference call and live streaming. Present at this venue are Mr. Tian Guoli, Chairman of CCB, and also Ji Zhihong, Vice President of CCB, and Mr. Wang Hao, Ms. Zhang Min, Mr. Li Yun, and also Mr. Hu Changmiao, CRO of CCB, and also Mr. Liang Jingxong. Anthony is also joining us online, and we also have some representatives of the directors and supervisors at the venue, and also heads of other departments. My name is Hu Changmiao, Secretary of the Board.
The announcement of CCB in 2021 was made last night, and also the papers were already released on the official website of CCB for your information. In the interest of time, we will not present the details on this occasion. Now we would like to invite Chairman Tian Guoli for the speech.
Dear investors, analysts, media friends, good afternoon. On behalf of all the staff of CCB, I'd like to welcome all of you to this announcement. I'd also like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation for your long-term support for CCB. In 2021, in the face of the complicated situation home and abroad and also the different challenges and risks CCB has been earnestly implementing the deployments of the CPC Central Committee and State Council, and promoting the new development concept and also the new finance action.
We guided the financial resources to flow into the key areas and weak links in the economy, and of course we contributed to the construction of the new development model and of course the new high-quality development. Actually we had the balance growth in assets and liabilities. The net profit for 2021 increased by 11.09%. We had an average growth rate of 6.25% for two years, and the NPL ratio is down by 0.14%, and we planned for CNY 91 billion dividend payments. We had a very good beginning for the 14th Five-Year Plan. We actually handed out a pretty excellent report card to the shareholders and the society. I think all of the indicators are already in these papers, so I will not go into details on this occasion. The new finance explorations by CCB is not only reflected in those digital indicators.
We actually share in the creation of solutions to the national problems and also the social issues. Of course we also have won a lot of trust and support along the way. The CCB community actually enables the citizens to enjoy the services that we can provide everywhere, and this inclusive lending that is digitalized and targeted actually has grown from the thin-profit business to a major driver of business. Over CNY 270 billion of Yunongtong has contributed to the rural revitalization drive. More importantly, new finance explorations can help us jump out of the box and to seek answers. Now the path has already become wider and wider, and so we have more momentum for sustainable development.
The second development curve is becoming more robust, and we have won a lot of recognition from the international community, so we got more confidence as a result. Now the COVID pandemic and the changes and also the geopolitics, of course we have more uncertainty surrounding the market. However, we can still expect a pretty long-term rosy prospect for the Chinese economy. In recent days, the State Council Financial Stability and Development Committee held a special meeting and called on financial institutions to look at the big picture and support the development of the real economy. Of course we will continue to be people-centric, and we will continue to integrate resources along the path of new finance. Of course we will reward you with better results and better performance so that we can jointly safeguard the stable development of the capital market.
Of course we are also looking forward to all of you lending as you're supporting and increasing your holding of shares.
Thank you. Now let's head on to the Q&A session. In order to have more chances for you, we actually propose you each ask one question. Please identify yourself and your organization before you ask your questions. Now the floor is open for questions. Ladies and gentlemen, now let's move on to the Q&A session. If you have a question, please press asterisk plus number one and then wait for your turn. The first question comes from Lu Yuhang from Financial Times, sir. First of all, big congratulations on CCB on your good results. We could see the net profit actually hit a record high. I also heard Chairman you actually talk about the new finance action, and we heard about it on multiple occasions.
Also to ask you, can you give us more details? What are the differences between the new finance action and the traditional finance, and what roles does it have for the performance of CCB? Thank you.
Thank you for your attention to new finance. Actually, new finance action is a new thinking about finance under a new development philosophy. The traditional finance has been developing for several centuries, and it has actually played very important roles in promoting human society. Of course, we actually have seen great changes as a result. There's one basic issue. Now in this digital and information era, people's demand for physical stuff and also for spiritual stuff is increasing. We need a new language, new logic to talk about new finance.
In particular, after the financial crisis, we actually should think more about how we can serve the society better rather than become a social issue. Let me give you an example. In the past, in order to gain efficiency, if you invest in 20% of the companies, you can expect 80% of benefits or profit. This is very, very sharp calculus. However, in this new development era, with the people-centric philosophy, if we are over pursuing the value, then you might forget that 80% of the customers, and they will be left unattended. They will be marginalized. This new finance action all boils down to the attention to people. Of course, we also should be supported by tools. If you want to serve that 80%, the majority of the people, it can not only be done by your wishes. We're not able to do that.
Now with the Fintech going on, we are better empowered to do that. On the one hand, we have very lofty aspirations, and we are more able to serve the society. I can give you one more example. Just recently, we were developing the Yunongtong, which actually serves the villages. That is the connection of the villages. In every village, CCB built about 520,000 outlets that cover basically all villages, or I should say 80% of the villages in this country, because some natural villages are extremely small in terms of the population. We can cover 80% of the villages in China through that Yunongtong project. In the urban areas, you might not need to go to a CCB outlet to handle your business. Actually, there's no boundary in this sense. The countryside should also have access to modern financial services.
A marginalized farmer can enjoy the same level of service that can be enjoyed in the city. This itself plays a very important role in financial equality. It's very simple. We can take advantage of the community-level health clinics and also the CPC grassroots outlets. We can put some machines there, and then people can get their service. We cannot do it all by a mobile phone because people might not be that internet capable or mobile phone capable. Basically, if we can use this as a tool, then we can pretty much deliver all the services that are delivered in the busiest urban areas. For example, withdrawals, deposits, and also some wire transfer, and also fast loan, etc., all of these can be enabled. In addition, we can also help the village-level government in terms of the e-governance and also employment service, etc.
It's just a one-stop service platform. Another example is inclusive finance. In the past, in the old days, people were trying to compete for the big accounts. We used to have this two big or do big strategy. Now with the transition from the high-speed development to high-quality development of this country, now when it comes to high quality, we should not only look at the big ones. We should also pay attention and spare our attention equally to the small ones or the midsize ones to improve the whole quality across the society. Inclusive finance is very important. Several years ago, we made this a strategy. When you lend to the mid and small or micro and medium businesses, without the help of fintech, you just cannot do that. It's impossible. However, the return is different.
You can just add one zero to lend to a big account. Of course, you need to make a lot of investments to lend to the micro and small businesses. With the big data and fintech, we can be better able to lend to the micro and small businesses. In the past, we can lend to about CNY 20 -CNY 30 billion in the old days to the small businesses with an NPL ratio of 7%-8%. Now with the internet technology, with the latest IT, and also with the AI technology or big data or blockchain, you name it, basically with all of these tools, we are better able to do such things. In 2018, in the very first year, we lent CNY 230 billion with an NPL ratio of 1% and CNY 350 billion in 2019. The NPL ratio is still at around 1% in 2020.
We had CNY 450 billion of loans, and the NPL ratio still was kept within 1%. Basically, it took us less than five years for CCB to develop the inclusive finance lending to grow it to over CNY 2 trillion. Let me give you some data points for your comparison. We all know that CCB is closely linked to the real estate industry and our lending to real estate. We actually granted a lot of mortgage loans. It took us about 30 years to have a lending of about CNY 5 trillion in real estate. It took us just three-four years to grow inclusive finance lending to CNY 5 trillion. Maybe it's very hard to think that CCB handles inclusive finance because inclusive finance has been tried by a lot of people.
It's not that people do not want to serve micro and small businesses, but that means very high NPL ratio. The banks do not have that capacity to meet the standard.
We have new strategies for new finance. With our support, CCB has only used three-four years to grow our scale to CNY 2 trillion. Also for our NPL is below our expectations. Our CBIRC had a tolerance of 3%, but for us, it was only around 1%. I can say it is pretty effective, which really provided us with a lot of confidence. In the future, we will try better and try harder to realize our ambition of providing services to the overall country and to the majority of the people so that we can have a more extensive scope of services. We can better help the small, micro, and midsized businesses so that we can leverage more capability of new finance and fintech to do better, to do more.
More people can enjoy those financial services and resources in an equal and fair manner. Moreover, for CCB, we are also pushing forward our house leasing strategy. In the past, this is not something by traditional banks. Traditional banks only offer loans. When we are trying to contribute to a mature or a developed market of house leasing, it is very difficult to do. We also call that new finance. We have a whole set of ideology of serving the society. Under that umbrella, we have reconstructed some of our logic for new finance and reconstructed some new product. We have a lot of innovative product for that and with great results and great benefits to both the economy and the society. Thank you.
Thank you, Chairman. Next question. Next question, Shulan from Morgan Stanley, please.
Thank you for the opportunity. I'm Shulan from Morgan Stanley. I have a question regarding the structure as well as loan issuing. In 2021, the overall growth for loans is very good. Specifically for corporate loans, it's growing very rapidly. We were wondering what are the reasons behind that. Moreover, we can see that it is proposed by the regulatory department that the social financing growth speed should be in line with the nominal economic growth. Actually, this year, our overall economic growth goal is adjusted downward compared to last year. Would our goals adjust accordingly? What are some changes that we might see in the issuance of loans in key areas, Mr. Ji?
Thank you for following us. As a major bank, CCB has been promoting the roles for services of finances. We try to achieve six guarantees, six stabilities.
The more of the financial resources will be contributed to the key areas and the weak links. We try to achieve a sustainable and continuous growth at the same time. In 2021, we had a very good growth compared to the end of last year. We had an increase of RMB 2 trillion with an increase of 12%. For domestic corporate loans, with an increase of RMB 1.2 trillion, up by 14.8%. We've contributed more and stepped up for infrastructures. On that basis, we've supported more for green inclusive manufacturing as well as rural rejuvenation. We issued more loans in those regards to better fulfill the need of real economy financing. One is that we've provided services to the major program of the country and to leverage our traditional advantages with an increase of RMB 733.1 billion, up by 16.9%.
The second is that we are trying to be more green and trying to increase the quality of that greenness so that we can establish a long-term development mechanism, explore new products, new services, and new measures for green finance. We issued more loans in terms of clean energy conservation, as well as carbon reduction. We have an increase of green loans, CNY 515.5 billion, up by 35.6%. The third is that our inclusive finance continues to lead the market. We continue to diversify our system for inclusive finance. For CBIRC, the inclusive finance balance is around CNY 1.9 trillion, up by CNY 449.9 billion. We are leading the industry in that regard. Number four is that we continue to support the high-quality development for the manufacturing industry. We have an increase of CNY 152 billion, up by 29.2%.
We are trying to build an assessment system for the innovation capabilities of the tech industries. Our strategic increase for emerging industries has an increase of RMB 306 billion, up by 49.8%. Number five, we are trying to consolidate our result of poverty alleviation and build our service brand for rural rejuvenation. We're continuing to innovate our models of product and services. We have a new increase of RMB 377 billion for rural loans, up by 18.1%. At the same time, we are also promoting this mega retail ideology. We have RMB 7.9 trillion for individual loans balance, up by RMB 658.1 billion, up by 9.1%. We're still continuing remaining our first and top one status. As of now, our economy is still facing many challenges and pressure, including the downward of expectations and impact to supplies as well as the drop of demand.
We need to be more proactive. We need to take initiative and keep everything stable. In the next step, we will push everything forward while remaining in that stability, continue to consolidate the micro policy, support the real economy, and continue with an appropriate increase of new issued loans. At the same time, following the macro policy orientation as well as the demand of the customers to appropriately control the pace of the increase of loan increases. With regard to our key areas, the first is that we focus on the key areas and the weak links of the real economy. We continue to provide financial support to inclusive finance, technology, innovation, manufacturing, green development, and rural revitalization. We try to have this increase while remaining stability.
The second is that we continue to provide good services for the major projects of our country and to increase or to focus on our issuance of loans for key areas as well as for infrastructure. Number three is that we keep a stable issuance of real estate loans so that more of the appropriate needs of the property purchasers will be fulfilled. Number four is that we continue to increase our internal demand to build up our ecological scenarios and to develop consumer finances. At the same time, we have this good circulation of regional economy, including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei region, Yangtze River Delta, the Greater Bay Area, as well as Chengdu and Chongqing areas. We at the same time focus on the support of central and western regions and the Northeast.
CCB, as a major bank, are also trying to leverage our good capabilities of both the parent banks and the subsidiaries to have this overall increase as well as for different debts and to increase our scale of asset management. This direct financing channel in the recent years is very good. In the next step, we can continue to guide the social financing and social funding into supporting the real economy. They can play a credible role in the future. That's it.
Thank you so much. Next question. Next question from Mr. Zhang Shuai, CICC.
Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. I'm from CICC. Previously, we can see that the chairman was attending the press conference of the State Council Information Office. CCB is doing a lot of tryouts and trials for intelligent governance.
In the early of 2021, we attended the Open Day of Intelligent Governance hosted in Kunming of Yunnan Province. We know that there are a lot of services provided by CCB. Also online, we can see there's a lot of good implementations of new finance. There are a lot of good cases. Thank you goes out to the management. Thank you to the information release so that we can understand better the competitiveness of CCB in this area. I was wondering whether the management can introduce more regarding the intelligent governance and what are our ideas behind that from the perspective of the group and what are some impacts it could have for our performances. Thank you.
Actually, for this intelligent or smart governance, this is also part of new finance. For new finance, we have a new development ideology.
The core is innovation, to be green, to be more inclusive, to be more open. Those are our principles. If you follow that logic, a lot of the answers will become very obvious, including our financial products, in our designing of scenarios, allocation of resources. You can have the answers for all that. For example, CCB has a great team of technology. In the past, traditionally, we leverage that to compete with our peers. We try to innovate to issue more new products. It is not necessarily will boost our competitiveness because you are not having a wider or more comprehensive perspective. If you don't focus too much or be obsessed with that, if you focus on serving the society, when you win the trust of the society, when you have a very good reputation, after that, you will have greater potential.
You have more room and space in the market. That is our underlying logic. For our digitalization and our technology, we have such great ideology so that we can empower the society. Very early on, when we were in the Yunnan Province and we were working with the executives or the management of that province, they were thinking, "Oh, you are so innovative. Oh, you can do this." We proved that, yes, this is something we're capable of. Because to be honest, for intelligent or smart governance in terms of technology, it's not that difficult or tough. Because for our banks, we deal with the numbers for a long term. We have a very good capability to deal with those numbers. We can design different platforms or different products for smart governance.
For our perspective, for the benefit for the public, it could be a lot better. Based on that, we were working with the Yunnan Province and we've established a strategic cooperation agreement. Everyone was having this attitude of to try this out. Yes, indeed, within a very short period, we have this one-phone connection for dealing with different affairs. In Shaanxi Province, it is the same. A lot of the local government believes that, "Oh, this is a pathway that we can pursue." When we try to build those areas up, we weren't focusing on profit. We weren't focusing on the revenue. With our partners, including with the tech companies, we had a very good relationship of collaboration. This is to modernize the governance capability of the local government. This is our responsibility as a major bank. This is our obligation.
In the past year, we have more than CNY 300 billion profit. With that profitability, you should be paying back to the society. We weren't focusing on the profit when we tried to help with the intelligent or the smart governance. We had a very good result, exceeding our expectations. Now we have re-signed the agreement with 29 provinces and cities. We reported the Xinxing Ji and also the Internet Plus Governance Plus Supervision Scenario Development. Now we provided governance service inquiry and also reservation for over 200 million users. We actually are connected to over 25,000 governments. We actually assisted in the processing of over 3 million government affairs and over seven implementations of over 7 million lists. Basically, we increased their efficiency by 30%, reduced their handling time by 38%, and we can cut the errands by over 60%.
I'm citing these data just to show you that with better data, we can reduce the trouble people should take to do them. This requires concrete action. It's not only on the part of the government. Financial institutions like us have the capability. We should just give back. This is part of sharing and being open. On ATM machines, we actually delivered cross-provincial service. You might hear a lot of news coverage in Shanghai. In Shanghai, we can actually ensure that if you are in Shanghai, then you can do things at home. For example, if you're a migrant worker living in Shanghai, working in Shanghai, if you lost your ID card, then actually you don't have to go back home to do these things. You can actually go to a CCB outlet to handle such things.
14,000 outlets of CCB can deliver over 6,000 governance issues. Actually, it's all enabled in Shanghai. You can handle all the issues across the country in Shanghai. Here in Xinxing Ji, Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province, it's all connected. We've already delivered over 6,000 increases in other services, over 40,000 such transactions. We serve over two million people. I'm talking about these outlets because in the past, you have to really join a very long queue to process to get this service. Now the traditional function is disappearing. 100% can be handled online. CCB has such a wide network of outlets, and they are very strategically located. Just think about it from the internet perspective. You can use them to handle governance issues, to serve the public.
Also, we can change them into workers' harbor so that those truckers, those cleaners, and those express delivery people can come there to use outlets for bathrooms, to get some water, etc. Of course, we also work with the disabled association to make it accessible to all the disabled people and to deliver better service to the marginalized group. If we can follow that logic, then we can actually make a difference to the everyday life of the ordinary people and provide more convenience. I just touched on Yunongtong moments ago. This is also part of the governance. How can we better ensure a fairer and more equal distribution of financial resources when it comes to rural revitalization?
A very important point is that since we've just completed the most important battle against poverty in order to consolidate this achievement, without financial resources, you can hardly make it sustainable. How can we take advantage and build on the very successful battle against poverty and develop the rural areas? Financial resources are really the most important resources that you should put in place in the first place. The Yunongtong project, I just mentioned the number across the villages. We just want to put our tentacles there in those villages so that people living in those remote areas can enjoy the services. Those people that grow crops, those people that actually raise animals or animal husbandry can get such services. It's part of the governance. On the other hand, it also gives us a lot of opportunity to grow new business.
Of course, we're also trying to work in the field of banking plus governance. Let me give you one more example. We established those specialized platforms to enable payment products. This alone, in medical diagnosis, we actually did over CNY 100 billion in business. Finance can actually also make a profit out of business for the majority of people. It's better than those NIM-based profits because we can make a difference to the society and really tangibly improve people's life. For us, people working in the banking industry, we also feel a very strong and lofty sense of mission. As a financial practitioner, we can actually serve the people and give back to society. That is really quite an inspiration for us and for our staff.
Under new development strategy, we really can do a lot of things, and there can be a lot of opportunities so that we have the opportunity to really better serve the society. Thank you. Next question.
I'm Zhong Huanan with PIMCO. My question concerns asset quality because in 2021, the overall asset quality, the whole banking industry, including CCB, was looking up. However, there have also been some risk exposures in certain fields. Now we did triple whammy from the real economy this year. My question to the management is that what's your view on the trend in this year's asset quality and credit cost? And I'd also like to ask your view and judgment and also some countermeasures relating to the real estate industry. CRO Cheng Yuanguo, thank you.
Thank you for this question. Now, the economic operation is overall stable. Of course, we have made important preliminary progress in guarding against the risk. In 2021, we actually maintained the stability of the risk. The NPL ratio is 1.42% down by 0.41%. We know the risk exposure is closely linked with the overall economy and also the endowment of our resources and also the internal management capability. This year, we will continue to deliver very strong management to deal with these triple whammies like the geopolitics and real estate, etc. Of course, we'll also try to make our countermeasures even better targeted. We expect stability in the credit costs.
On the one hand, the Chinese economy is still improving in spite of the difficulties. This long-term rosy prospects for the Chinese economy remain unchanged. In the first two months, we can see that the major economic indicators are showing improvement. That further bears it out.
We will actually pay attention to the three missions and three measures to further improve our credit mix. We will continue to boost the inclusive finance, consumption finance, and rental house support. Assets in these fields are overall good. We will continue to increase our efforts in the disposal of non-performing assets. Fourthly, we will also try to improve our governance. We have always been adhering to the balanced, coordinated, and sustainable strategy to improve the comprehensive and smart risk management and improve our capability. Of course, we have also optimized the pre-lending process and strengthened the mid-lending procedure and post-lending management. Of course, we also focused on the weak links in the post-lending process and, of course, brought the most out of the latest technology with regard to the real estate industry.
In the process of developing the new development strategy, maybe it's very hard for us to avoid certain risks in certain fields. Now, the fluctuations in this field gave us some challenges for us. Now real estate is going on the right path. This will not affect the overall stability of CCB in 2021. Our asset quality in real estate remained stable. The NPL ratio was lower than the average NPL ratio in corporate loans. The proportion of the real estate landing was still pretty small, and the impact was manageable. Real estate had an impact on financial and economic stability. The central government economic meeting continued to decide to squeeze out the bubble in the real estate industry. Of course, we strengthened risk mitigation. As the next step, CCB will continue to implement the deployments of the central government.
We will continue to improve the risk mitigation and restructuring and promote the rental house development. Of course, we will also pay more attention to the risk profile of the industry to maintain the stability in the industry. Next question.
Next question comes from Qiu Zhaoyan with the Insurance Newspaper of PBOC.
Thank you. My name is Qiu Zhaoyan. I'd still like to follow up on that previous question. You just mentioned that we need to support the new financing needs. Of course, we also need to increase our support in key areas. In real estate, the rental house support has been the call of the government. The government report also mentioned that there should be more development of the long-term rental house and basic housing. CCB has also tweaked its policy in response.
In the past, people went to CCB to buy a house. Then people went to CCB to rent a house. I'd like to ask your measures in this regard. Of course, the lending in the rental house, which has already been included into the lending concentration management for CCB, how much impact does it have on CCB? The personal housing loan is a traditional advantage for CCB. What's your strategy for this year? I'd also like to ask about the proportion of real estate lending. It's slightly down in 2021. Will there be more changes in 2022? Thank you.
Thank you for the questions. If you want to rent a home, then come to CCB. This has been recognized by more and more people.
This itself is the best approval of our achievements over the past four years of work. People have been paying close attention to rental house, basic rental housing, etc. Local governments have been coming up with a lot of the specifications for implementation. The environment is improving. CCB, of course, will make the most out of our experience and, of course, take advantage of our legacy to do a better job in the field. Now we're focusing on three things. First, on the financing. We are improving our financing service. Now, we actually have the evaluation and screening mechanism. On that basis, we can increase our support for house rental. By the end of last year, the balance in this regard, it topped over CNY 130 billion. This year, we also witnessed very strong growth.
In the meantime, we are also providing the green service. This can help green the exit channel and attract more funds into the field so that we can have a virtuous cycle. We try to supply more housings. We rely on our CCB Housing to use a different method to ensure the sources of those housings, including the renovated rental housings for those existing housings. We try to build up new houses for security housing. We use an innovative model of existing housing to use existing or those housings that are not in use. We have more than 129,000 houses. Under CCB management, we also have 179 rental communities of CCB. Next is for establishing the transaction platform of CCB leasing. That is for CCB Jianrong Home.
The registered user has exceeded 38 million with more than 150,000 registered corporate users and to help with the transparency of the market environment and to make the transaction more convenient. We also established the secure housing application over 59 different cities. We are having these ecosystems established. When it comes to the loan concentration, we believe this can better support the commercial banks with the establishment or construction of the market of leasing. For different local governments, there are different regulations and guidelines being established for different local governments. With the next step, we are trying to develop that system of specific guidelines and regulations. Though we are seeing an increasing influence, so in individual mortgages or individual housing, this is our advantage. We will continue to support the healthy development of the real estate market.
We are seeing an increase of need and demand for individual mortgages. We will be prepared. Just now, our VP, Mr. Ji, had introduced the details. That's it for me.
Thank you so much. Next question from Shanghai Securities Journal.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I'm Zhang Chongsi from Shanghai Securities Journal. We know that inclusive finance is a very important strategy for CCB. Our loans are increasing very rapidly, but we remain at very good asset quality. What are the keys and importance behind that? Also, under the overall backdrop of giving interest concessions, our loan interest of inclusive finance is going down. This will be very good for the real economy. Will our profitability be affected? Can the management help us analyze in this regard? Thank you.
Thank you for your question. That is a very important question regarding inclusive finance as well as the sustainable development of our inclusive finance. Just now, our chairman had introduced before in 2021. This is the fourth year of CCB trying to continuously develop inclusive finance. We have actually mentioned the balance. That is the overall triple R targeted cuts. We also had another number of CBIRC that is CNY 1.9 trillion. Our chairman mentioned that previously as well. For last year, we had an increase of 31.6%. For corporate customers, our customers have exceeded 1.93 million, an increase of 220,000 customers. That is corporate customers, very rapid in last year. Also, for the inclusive small and micro businesses, just like you said, our interest rate is on average 4.16%, down by 20 basis points compared to the end of last year.
You can see we are trying to increase the quantity, but are trying to reduce the cost. Our scope is more expensive. We are increasing our quality of services. At the same time, our CRO just introduced. Our overall NPL is 1.42%. For inclusive finance, the NPL is lower than the average NPL. In this regard, we are stabilizing the economy. We are stabilizing the growth. For small and micro enterprises, the country is providing them more support to give them interest concessions, the delayed repayment. All of this can contribute to their growth and development. This is the external reasons that we can maintain a very good asset quality. On the other hand, we had a lot of implementation of digital innovation. Our inclusive finance is digital inclusive finance.
We are trying to increase the number of customers and trying to make the regulation more standardized. We have a lot of external numbers leveraged, data as well as the internal accumulation of data. Different departments are working together in coordination to achieve this overall mechanism. This is the internal reason. That's why we can maintain the risk very low. Our country is trying to encourage the commercial banks to better serve the small and micro enterprises. We also have targeted cuts of RRR as well as exemption of taxes, etc. All of those are supportive policies, which helped us to reduce the cost of funding as well as taxes. We talked about the digital inclusive finance. Naturally, that is very low cost of operation. We leveraged the digital inclusive finance.
Our asset quality compared to the past, just like the chairman mentioned previously, the NPL is very high. Right now, it is lowered. For our cost, it's very low. Our tax is dropping. That has given us a very good advantage to give interest concessions to the small and micro businesses. As you mentioned, profitability. Undoubtedly, our inclusive finance and inclusive loans, at the current level, with the support of the country, really made a lot of contribution, which helped with the adjustment of the customers as well as our overall structure. We are very confident. We will continue to provide good inclusive finance services. Well, let me just add a few words. Actually, for all of the efforts of CCB in terms of new finance, it's something that we try to build up our capability of serving the society with light assets.
We must be prepared for the 0% interest rate environment. We need to leverage our endogenous or internal capability to win over the trust of the clients. I believe for the smart governance, the remote technology of finances, we talked about without technology, there will be no finance. All of the products will be combined with technology. With regard to risk control, reduction of cost, we will see great improvements. This is another concept with regard to new finance.
Thank you so much, Mr. Wang, Chairman. Next question.
I'm Li Keqing. My question is with regard to technology. Fintech is the focus of many banks. It is also one of the three major strategies of CCB. We can see that CCB is trying to step up its effort in the fintech area. There are a lot of platforms and products rolled out.
We were wondering, do we have any quantifiable indexes for the development of fintech as well as how Fintech contributes to our performances? In the future, what is our plan with regard to the input and investment of fintech? Last year, we rolled out this CCB Life application. What are our considerations behind that? What is our situation?
Thank you so much for following Fintech of CCB. Yes, in the recent years, we can feel that with the development of information technology, our user is moving online and is more scenario-based. The traditional model of financial services cannot fulfill the demand of the clients anymore. That's why we are using more concepts of new finance.
We're trying to have more actions to build up this online channel of CCB Live so that in non-finance scenarios, different customers can still have this habit and need of using finance. We need to be connected with our customers in this ecosystem so that we can have this transition. For our customers, CCB Live provides very convenient services for both finance and non-finance. We also have incentives to encourage them to have consumptions. Actually, for merchants, we have a zero commissions strategy. We leverage our traffic of the platform and operation capabilities to empower the merchants. For local government, CCB Live supports different discounts of local government. We also have different platform scenarios for low-carbon travel, beautiful countryside to empower the real economy.
By the end of 2021, CCB Life has actually covered 326 cities with more than 34 million registered clients in the application and with more than 150 merchants. By now, we have more than 50 million registered users. For CCB Life, it's just one area of our fintech application, just like Chairman Tian mentioned. Without technology, there will be no finance. Fintech has been incorporated into the overall development of the strategy of CCB as well as for different areas of our business, just like the inclusive finance that you mentioned. We leveraged big data to analyze the credit as well as the business operation of small and micro businesses to promote the building of credit systems to restructure their service models. We can have rapid development. For intelligent government, we can have this collaborative relationship with more than 29 provinces.
We can cover all different services from our outlets. Our outlets have become a governance lobby for our local people. We have more than 2.5 transactions or trades with regard to intelligent governance so that the daily affairs of our people will be reduced. Leveraging AI, leveraging big data, we've established this proactive and intelligent risk management system. We have a safe operation platform. In 2021, we fended off more than 80 million cyberattacks. Those rely on the swift reactions and support of fintech. For the input or investment of fintech in 2021, the overall amount is CNY 23.58 billion, an increase of 6.6%. In the future, we will continue to increase our investment in Fintech. We will also continue to build up a team of talent for Fintech to have more input for R&D, for infrastructure.
We will build up this business platform for CCB Life as well as mobile banking and to have this integration of both online and offline scenarios. For house leasing, inclusive finance, rejuvenation, green finance, smart governance, wealth management, all of those businesses will see an increase of investment in Fintech so that our increase or development of technology can contribute to our overall capacity of serving the society.
Thank you. Next question. Securities Newspaper. Thank you. I'm with Securities Newspaper. I'd like to ask a question concerning retail. CCB has been the market leader when it comes to retail. You're also the biggest retail credit bank. Now all banks are actually competing in this business and trying to grow their business. Given this landscape, what's CCB's advantage in retail banking in terms of personal customer exploration and channel development? What's your plan and target? Thank you.
Thank you for the question. CCB has always been setting a premium on the development of retail business. In 2021, personal business increased by over 22 million. The daily average deposit increased by CNY 2.6 trillion. The AUM personal business increased by CNY 1.35 trillion. The balance of personal loan stood at CNY 7.89 trillion. We are expected to maintain our position as the biggest retail bank. The profit from this business stood at CNY 214 billion, accounting for 56.7%. We believe that the retail business of CCB has these three advantages. First, digital operation plus big asset management plus the connection between corporate and personal business. Digitalization has been a very striking feature. We have always been attaching great importance to digital operation. Digitalization for retail is also very important. For example, the identification of customers is digital.
Basically, we need to have very precise and scientific modules to locate our customers so that we can reach out to our customers, find those customers. In the process of processing transactions, we actually work to build the ecosystem. We want to serve the customers in that ecosystem. We developed that agency salary ecosystem and the big retail ecosystem and the agriculture ecosystem. Now we have these platforms for different groups of the customers where we got a lot of value. The great asset management is also becoming increasingly important. Actually, we started from a very small area to actually promote a change for the whole asset management business. For example, we developed the main venue for the wealth management and also the so-called wealth community. We also established this work platform for the account customers to enable our teams.
With regard to the management system, we are trying to connect the wealth management to asset management and investment banking as a whole. We also covered all the way from the investment research to post-investment management. The AUM and also personal AUM, business AUM of CCB led the way. The 37 level one branches all witnessed their positive growth in the AUM and deposit balance. Basically, the asset management reputation of Long Taifu is also increasing. Then the personal and corporate business connection is also improving. The agency salary business and the agency social security service is improving, which actually promoted the personal business. These are the three features and advantages that CCB has. When it comes to the personal business service and the channel development, we would also like to promote their further development also in these three fields. Thank you. Next question.
Economic Journal Lu Yu. Thank you. I have a question relating to green finance. We know that China is promoting carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. A lot of financial institutions are also contributing and got their support from that policy. We also know that CCB has come out with a lot of action plan and also developed your green finance development strategy. I'd like to ask about the progress of these jobs. What about the pricing and the asset quality when it comes to green finance? Thank you.
Thank you for this question. As you've mentioned in your statement in 2021, the Green Finance Committee, which we established internally, and under that, we also set up the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality working group. We actually developed the 20-measure action plan and prepared our green finance development strategy and came out with our roadmap.
The international cooperation in green finance is also deepening. For example, we held the Green Finance International Forum. We signed the declaration for green finance. Of course, we became the official member of the Green Disclosure in 2021. Of course, we are strictly managing the environmental and climate risk, which is part of our comprehensive risk management and credit expansion management system. In the meantime, with the support of the departments, we actually are promoting or doing the stress test for climate risk. Of course, we are also smoothly promoting the work in carbon neutrality to make sure that we are okay with energy security. You also asked about the specific measures we're taking in this regard. It's actually developing very rapidly. First, green loans are increasing.
At the end of 2021, by the CBIRC standards, we actually had about CNY 2 trillion balance of green loans and pretty much delivered the regulatory requirement that the green loans should not be lower than the personal loans. We outperformed that target because we are way above the growth rate in other categories of land use by 20-30 basis points percent, I should say. Actually, we effectively supported the climate work in this country. Non-credit green business is also improving. In 2021, we undertook CNY 41.4 billion of green bonds by a big margin. Of course, we held over CNY 23 billion in green bonds by a big margin as well. Of course, we also issued the first-ever sustainable green bond in China and Europe. Of course, we also issued the ESG bond index, green bond index.
All of these showed CCB's efforts in green finance. As next step, we will continue to deepen the green contents under new finance system. We will provide even more collection of green financial products and services so that we can make green finance a new pillar for CCB's growth and new competitive edge of CCB.
Thank you. Next question. With Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Thank you for this opportunity. My question concerns the interest margin. We're happy to see that the interest margin stabilized since Q2 last year. We also saw that the central banks further downgraded the LPR. This year, there might be some more pressure for pricing. I'd like to ask in 2021, what's your expectation of the NIM in 2022?
Thank you for the question. Yes, in 2021. The NIM at 2.13% down by 6 basis points.
NIM management is a big challenge and point of pressure for us on the asset. We actually increased our efforts in reducing the fees so that we also manage to reduce the cost. The lending cost and the interest rate cost is also down in terms of the liabilities, though the pricing has been changed, which actually helped smooth over the premium in deposit. However, the overall trend was not changed. In the process, the market competition for deposit is also increasing. This situation is hard to be broken or to change. On the one hand, we increased our support for the real economy on the liabilities end through digital operation and asset management. Also, we increased the asset management so that we can improve our capability to manage the interest bearing as a business. As you mentioned, the NIM stabilized in 2021.
The net interest margin among peers is also a leader. As you're aware, we are also aware that LPR was down twice in December, the one-year down by 15 basis points, the five-year LPR down by 5 basis points. Considering the downside in lending interest rate and the pretty stable deposit interest rate and the two cuts, the RRR last year, we expect pretty more downside pressure for the NIM this year. This is a common challenge to all banks in China. At CCB, we'll continue to closely monitor the external changes. Of course, we will also strengthen our risk study. Of course, we will focus on value creation and focus on new finance and digital transition.
We will take the opportunity, the national strategic implementation, consumer consumption upgrading so that we can optimize our asset liability structure to maintain our NIM at a stable and robust level.
Thank you. Next question. Next question is with Ms. Lee from Hong Kong Economic Journal.
Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. This is the third year we're having a conference call. Last year, we said that maybe next year we can have a physical meeting. We just hope that the pandemic can be over as quickly as possible. The performance of CCB grew very robustly. We also noted that CCB grew steadily. In terms of the trend, it slowed down. I'd like to ask the reasons for the slowdown. I also like to ask about your expectation of the impact of the fee income. What's your expectation of the fee income growth this year? What will be your priorities in the future?
Last year, the fee income is CNY 121.5 billion at 6%. It's actually a pretty high level in the past five years. In 2021, in different quarters, the growth rate were 8.8, 4.7, and 5.4% respectively. We can see that the growth rate had been pretty stable. Since Q2, we could see an incremental increase. As a state-owned bank, on the one hand, we were implementing the deployments of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. We're trying to discharge corporate social responsibility. We're trying to implement rate cuts and actually yield profits to the whole society and to lend stronger support for the real economy. On the basis of the big reduction in 2020, in 2021, we further expanded our reduction.
Of course, we yielded profits to MSEs. The fee reduction was no less than in 2020. For interest concessions and their impact on the commissions and fees, of course, there are such impacts and influences. We are trying to have more transitions and reforms and to cultivate our comprehensive servicing capabilities and for overall our asset management, wealth management, transactions. Those fees have rapid increases. That is a great support for the increase of our fees and commissions. You mentioned 2022. In 2022, we will try to step up our transition for intermediary businesses to connect closely with the need of the customers, to consolidate our traditional advantages, including the consulting letter of guarantees, settlements of organizations, individuals. Those are mature and developed businesses. We'll continue to push that forward.
At the same time, we'll also focus on our key and important areas so we can leverage our advantage of multi-licenses. We will increase our capability in terms of asset allocation and investment consulting for investment banking or trust, etc. We will engage more and increase our capability to serve the asset management market. We are trying to boost our capability for comprehensive financial services, to have more innovative products, better serve our customer in terms of financing investment. Of course, we have a lot of innovative services, including house leasing, etc., to push toward the stable and sustainable development of intermediary businesses. Overall, it is expected that in 2022, our commissions and fees will see a steady increase. Thank you.
Thank you, VP, Mr. Ji Zhihong. Well, due to the constraint of time, we will have the last question. Next question is from China Securities Journal, Madam Shi Shiyu.
Okay. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to ask this question. I'm Shi Shiyu from China Securities Journal. My question is regarding the transition of WMPs. Actually, by the end of this year, the deadline of our new asset management rules had been reached. What are the overall situation and with this current new environment, what are plans with regard to that? And what is our overall layout of products and what is our development of businesses with regard to WMP?
Thank you for your question. Since the implementation of new asset management rules, CCB is coming back to our core and original purposes and strictly following the new rules and develop new businesses. We are also working with the entire group to push forward the high-quality development of this business.
By the end of 2021, for our existing product, it has seen a decrease. In the early of this year, it was CNY 1.5 trillion. It was reduced to CNY 183.9 billion. This is an outperformance compared to the regulatory requirement. All of the NAV types of WMPs have been transferred to the subsidiaries, and the scale of the individual cases, CCB has the lowest amount compared to four of the major banks. At the same time, CCB is also supporting CCB Wealth Management with a clean start and a stable development. For CCB Wealth Management, it is the first of its kind. Starting its business in June 2019, after tireless effort over the past two and a half years, we have established the overall professional system of investment research as well as sales operation and risk control.
By the end of 2021, we have an overall AUM of CNY 2.19 trillion topping off the wealth management companies. Wealth management of CCB has a deep understanding of the new asset management rules and to promote this business in a strategic level and propose a mega wealth management system over the entire group so that we can promote the high-quality development of mega wealth and mega asset management. In the past two years, we have a great development showcasing how effective we are. In the next step, we will continue with this strategy and continuously to establish our professional capabilities throughout the entire process and to provide a more competitive and more diverse, comprehensive investment and financing services so that the mega asset management will become the third pillar for the transition of CCB. There will be another three areas.
One is that we will integrate the overall capabilities of the entire group in terms of asset management. For the new asset management rules, for the funds, for trust, there are new regulations. CCB is a bank with multiple licenses. We will continue to leverage our asset management capabilities for our pensions, for our wealth management, as well as to support different subsidiaries. They will build their own features, serve the customers, create the values. To accelerate our building of this business, that is, for both internally and externally, we have this coordination and an overall mechanism so that the increasing need of the customers will be met. By the end of 2021, the overall scale has exceeded CNY 6 trillion. The next is that we will have this entire channel cleared out. That is, the wealth management product will be our ballast.
We will have more funds going to ESG, small and micro businesses, and these new important businesses so that there will be a lot of promotions for long-term investment policies and so that for the special and new companies in the market, we'll have this long-term funding supported. The next area is that for the pension funds, we will continue to have more investment in the services of pension. We will have a good pilot of sub-pension as well as the third pillar innovation and to promote the investment and financing for pension. There will be a lot of key works in this area and to build a good brand of CCB in this area. CCB Wealth has issued a pension product with more than RMB 5 billion goals reached. For the latest product, we are in this process.
Actually, you have a chance of purchasing. Welcome if you want to take a look at this. At the same time, we will empower our subsidiaries focusing on their three capabilities and three major tasks. At the same time, the asset or wealth management capability of the group will be incorporated in the comprehensive risk management mechanism. We will protect the rights and interests of investors and will accompany the investors to build a concentrated management mechanism of the wealth management. That is, the mega asset management. For fintech risk management and fintech as well as for corporate and private customers, we will empower all of that capability and carry that over with the subsidiaries to promote the high-quality development of the group.
Thank you so much. Thank you, VP, Mr. Ji. Today, we have an online streaming. We also have a lot of investors taking part. There's a lot of questions raised online. Previously, we have our hotlines and emails collecting the questions from investors. The majority of the questions have been answered by the executives in the management of CCB. Some of the questions, due to the constraint of time, we cannot answer that. We will also respond in the future. There's another question that everyone is paying attention to. That is, for the shares are undervalued.
What is the management's view on the undervaluing of the shares of CCB? Regarding the dividend payout, it is still 30%. In the future, will we see an increase? Well, let me answer this question. Previously, when Chairman Tian Guoli was attending the press conference at the State Council, we had a comprehensive introduction.
Yes, we are consolidating the decisions and the arrangement of the State Council to focus around all the payments of the society as an economy to increase our capabilities with regard to the three major strategies. Faced with the impact of COVID-19 as well as the uncertainties internally and externally, CCB has consolidated ourselves and remained a long-term development. Our overall index is leading our peers. The market performance has been recognized by everyone. With regard to the shares or the pricing of the shares in CCB, actually, we are performing quite well compared to our peers. Since our IPO in 2005, we had an accumulative dividend payout exceeding RMB 900 billion. That is a thank you to the investors who have this long-term investment portfolio. There are good values created for those investors.
Actually, for the dividend payout or cash payout, it has been kept at around 30%. Yesterday, we had also released that information that this year, we have RMB 0.03 or RMB 0.0364. That is an increase compared to before. CCB is trying to create good values and sustainable values for the society and for our investors. We believe for those investors who have a strategic view, we will continue to support CCB. CCB will continue to consolidate our new finance development and support the development of the economy and the society. We will gather this opportunity to achieve high-quality development to continuously have good returns for our dear investors, specifically long-term investors. That's it for our annual results announcement today. If you have any more questions, you can reach out to our PR department as well as our BOD office.
We can answer your questions promptly. That's it for today. We wish you success in all of your endeavors. Thank you so much.