Dear investors and analysts, good afternoon. Welcome to today's ICBC Investor call. I'm the General Manager Wang Liancheng of Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations Department of ICBC. ICBC has always gives great importance to the IR, and also the protection of the legal rights interest, respect to the market, and respect investors. We always associate the principle of comprehensive, proactive, targeted, coordinated, and effective IR evaluations management and have always managed to maintain frequent and candid communication with our investors. To better serve our investors and to improve our transparency, today we are holding this investor call, and we have already disclosed relevant announcement and also solicited relevant questions through our public email. Today, we're honored to have Dr.
Guan Xueqing, Board Secretary of ICBC, and also relevant department heads and also General Manager of some subsidiaries, namely, Department of Corporate Finance, Personal Finance, Credit Department, AL Department, Financial Accounting Department, FinTech Department, Credit Card Center, ICBC Technology and ICBC Wealth Management. We are also honored to have representative of SSE and also China Securities Investor Services Center for today's meeting. Today's meeting is divided to 2 parts. First, we will introduce relevant departments to give introduction of FinTech and wealth management. Then we will answer Q&A session, and we will provide simultaneous interpretation. Now, let's give floor to General Manager Ms. Zeng Qi of Personal Banking Department.
Thank you very much. Good afternoon. I'm the General Manager of Personal Banking Department, Zeng Qi. I will now introduce to you the development situation of ICBC Wealth Management. From the beginning of this year, we have improved our big wealth management system and leverage our banking profession and services to create value for our clients so as to maintain the sustainable development of our big Wealth Management. In these circumstances, we focus on our customer demand in the wealth management. We have three goals. The first is big customer base. If we look at the past wealth management, we focus on high-net worth clients. From this year, we target at full amount of clients, and now we target at over RMB 700 million individual clients. We divided our clients into high-end and long-tail clients.
We use online methods to reach our long-tail clients to better manage the funds and match their needs with proper products for our long-tail clients. For our team, including the wealth manager, the client manager, and professionals, we provide professional and smart channels for all of our clients to better manage their wealth through ICBC. The second stage is big circulation. In the past, we talk about wealth management and fund management products. Now we built up value chain of wealth management, asset management, and investment banking. According to various demands and risk appetite of our clients, we match their demands with proper supply and products. It helps ICBC to better use our deposits assets and to make better return for our clients. The third stage is big platforms.
We have started to constructed a big wealth management platform actually from the end of last year. The platforms was used in the public domain and private domain. The public side was for ICBC to use, and the private side is for our fund investments and asset management companies to operate with on their end. On the platform, we not only provide sales for various asset management products, we provide accompanying services for our clients prior in and post the investment. No matter what kind of investments you are, we have different courses and different teams to support your investment, which enables our clients to elevate their investment capabilities in managing their their assets. The fourth stage, the big scenario, we have divided our clients into eight categories.
In the big wealth management system, we combined different products with different categories of our clients. For clients above 55 years old, we actively promote a low risk product with higher return. However, for our Generation Z clients, we provide more flexible products. Meanwhile, from the mobile banking apps and WeChat, we align our customers with relevant products in those special zones so that they could actively and actively select the products they prefer. The 5th stage is big risk management. It is spread in 3 aspects. The 1st is with the fund companies. We cooperate with big fund management companies.
We would like to ensure the cooperation on good fund products with good fund management companies so that we could manage to lose less money and make more money in the fluctuation of markets so that it could display our high quality risk control concept in the management of assets for our clients. The second, we want to provide services prior and in and post the investment for our clients so as to elevate their own investment capabilities. The third is to make full use of our risk management system. We normally conduct a thorough research on the cooperation partners and thorough research on individual products to better select good products, good fund managers and good fund companies for our clients.
These are the brief introduction for the wealth management development of ICBC, and we welcome more of the attention from you very much.
Thank you for Wang Jun's remarks on the wealth management of ICBC. Let's give the floor to General Manager Mr. Yang Dongru of Fintech Department.
Thank you. I'm Yang Dongru from Fintech Department of ICBC. I'm honored to have this opportunity to share with you the achievement of Fintech of ICBC. The board and management of ICBC has always give great importance to Fintech. Our work has always consisted as the self-reliance of Fintech, and we have managed to lead our peers. We are the first bank to realize the centralized management of global business. We have established data center respective in Shanghai and Beijing, and which can support the asset management, both on-balance sheet and off-balance sheet, totaled 80 trillion RMB.
With the philosophy of the one ICBC, we have provided quality prime service to over 700 million personal customers and 9 million corporate wholesale companies from 49 countries and regions. Over recent years' efforts, the Fintech has given a lot of praises and awards from regulators and also the industrial authorities. Now the Fintech has become the core competitiveness of our bank. I would like to give more information from the following three aspects. First is we insist on the development through developing our technology. We have accelerate our research on some key and core technologies, application of some important technologies, as well as cutting-edge technology acceleration. So far, the, both the number of incremental and the total technology patents granted to ICBC may maintain the first place among the banking industry in China.
In terms of the core technology research, we have completed the cloud and distributive technology platform system, which can support the operation of our key and core businesses. For example, we can support over 12 billion transaction dispatch daily, and also over 100 million transactions per second. This cloud and distributed transition has also won the first prize for Fintech development given by PBOC. In terms of the key technology application, we have also provide some AI technology service and blockchain platforms, which have already provided services to over 60 business scenarios like trade finance and smart government affairs. In terms of cutting-edge technology exploration, we have cooperated with some key national strategic technology boards and some leading industrial side companies.
For example, we have already completed the comprehensive spatial information service platform using satellite remote sensing and GPS technology in terms of some key scenarios like post-landing monitoring and channel layout. We have also established enterprise-wide privacy algorithms which can be applied to trade and training and education fund monitoring. In quantum technology, we have also realized a 1,000-kilometer quantum key distribution and quantum random numbers at a large verification stage. We have always give great importance to talent. We have hired over 60% of the newly undergraduates from the technology universities, and over 40% of our colleagues at provincial branch has a background of fintech.
The total number of our fintech employees are over 17,000, and the staff managed by the head office exceeded 10,000, ranging from system architect, R&D engineer, and also data scientist. Thirdly, we have insisted on the innovation as the major driving force and to develop a digital fintech new paradigm. For example, in terms of marketing, we have made full use of big data and AI, and we have established a smart brand to serve the foreign side customers. In terms of customer service, we have extended the value chain of our business and also value chain of our products. To provide over thousands of such standardized products and services through API system and to over thousands of partners. In terms of business operation, we have also applied smart operation digital transformation.
We have to a large extent reduced manual input, which can replace over 45% of our manual business amount. In terms of risk control and management, we have integrated all the data from social credibility system and also domestic and foreign financial institutions with a total number of information over 3 billion. We have also provided our services to over 300 FIs and also over 100,000 corporate customers. That's the general information of our fintech development. In the future, we will continue to proceed with the technology-driven and value creation to better serve the quality development of ICBC.
Now, we are ready for the Q&A session. Please press star and 1 to raise questions. Now the first question from China Securities Investor Service Center to raise questions on behalf of more investors.
The first question from China InvestorService Center. Xie Wenwen.
That's great. Management of ICBC, I'm from China Securities Investor Service Center. I'm Xie Wenwen. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to raise questions. I would like to raise two questions about the wealth management and fintech. The first question is about fintech. Recently, we have seen ICBC has continued to deepen the technological transformation and restructuring and improved the supporting capability of enterprise technology platforms. For example, AI and blockchain have given the highest recognition from national assessment and review. Could you please give us more color as to the achievement of such kind of enterprise new technological platforms and how it empowers the businesses? The second question is about the wealth management.
We have noticed in November, a large extent we have seen the withdrawal from the bond market. Could you please give us some color as to the impact on the wealth management business of your bank, and what measures have you adopted in this regard?
Thank you for your question. You have raised altogether two questions. For the first question, I would like to invite Miss Yang, General Manager of Fintech Department, to answer your question. As to your second question, I would like to invite our ICBC Wealth Management subsidiary to answer your second question. The first question, Miss Yang, please.
Thank you for your question.
To better meet the business development requirement, we have accelerated the application of our FinTech. As we have already introduced, like AI and blockchain and all the other advanced technology, we have made a lot of explorations and application, and achieved a lot of outcome in empowering our business. This has been given high recognition by the industry and regulators. For example, we have won like the first prize of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Our blockchain have consecutively two years won the Forbes Blockchain 50. Among the peers, we are also the first bank to pass relevant assessment for the certificate. We have also won the Best Innovation Financial Enterprises by The Asian Banker magazine. I would also like to share with you some examples from the perspective of AI and blockchain.
In terms of AI, it can listen, study, think, and speak, ranging capabilities from biometrics, audio and video communication, smart voice, and altogether 13 capabilities. It's a comprehensive system. From algorithms perspective, it's the largest, with over 1,200 GPU. From data supporting perspective, it's the largest size among all peers. In terms of our algorithms, it also covers the most comprehensive algorithms. With over 2,000 calculation methods, which is also the largest size among all peers. We have applied it to over 1,000 financial services. From our centralized business center, we have to input thousands of vouchers images through AI machine learning and training. Now, all the large number of vouchers, over 800 categories, like account names and key elements from the vouchers and certificates, can be automatically recorded.
Almost 98% of all kinds of certificates and vouchers images can be automatically input. This is only one example. Due to the sake of time, I will not elaborate more. For Blockchain, we call it ICBC Blockchain, which means reliability in Chinese. In terms of privacy algorithms and also several breakthroughs have been made. Currently, it's for every second, we can deal with over 20,000 of recording accounting demands. In terms of security, the password system is closely related with security of information. The entire algorithms is coded, and security can be guaranteed. This has also been accredited by regulators. I can also give you an example in terms of the fund supervision.
For example, in some special fund supervision, like the construction fund or some welfare or philanthropy fund to ensure transparency, the application of the blockchain technology has been provided to over 600 customers. The manager of the application has been included as the only pilot program by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. That's all from me. Now, ICBC Asset Management will respond to your second question.
Thank you very much for your question. I'm Li Xuezhang from ICBC Asset Management. From November this year, affected by all kinds of influence factors of the market, there has been market fluctuation, and there has been some pullback of the net worth of our asset management products, especially with PR2 and PR3 level of products. However, the pullback extent is limited.
With the fluctuation, there has been some outflows in the open-end products. Mainly PR2 fixed income products. We will conduct many measures to better manage the liquidity and our funds. We put our clients' and investors' interests in the first place and have conducted several measures. The first is to enhance market research and adjust our interest rate risk exposure and to adjust our duration to match the maturity, so as to ensure a prudent return of our products for our clients. We prepared highly liquid assets to ensure the security of our assets. We coordinated relevant channels to better serve the clients. Sent several letters and research articles to our clients via several channels to respond to their demands.
Including sharing our market views and provide next step investment recommendations and to interact with our clients. This is a kind of a company so that we could help them rationally view the market fluctuations and build up their independent investment capacity. The home and abroad situations are still complicated and facing with many risks, including the Ukraine-Russian events still awaiting. We will adhere to our business mission to provide custody and asset management agency services and do our best to stabilize net value and scale of our products in extreme market conditions. To guarantee the maintenance and evaluation of the client's value. I'd like to add a few points. It is very normal for a network of our products to fluctuate.
For asset management products investors, they should have some risk bearings capabilities. We should focus on the risk appetite and the investment capabilities of our investors. In terms of the asset management subsidiaries, we will continue to enhance the investment capacity. Sorry, it was interrupted by. Now we will continue. Please welcome next question.
Okay, next question please.
I'm a retail individual investor for ICBC. Thank you for this opportunity to communicate with the management of ICBC, and we have also sensed the importance given by ICBC to investors' communication. I would like to ask a question about the dividend payout. We have seen ICBC has always maintained a relatively steady dividend payout ratio, and we have seen the regulators are encouraging listed company to increase the payout ratio. Have you considered to raise the dividend payout ratio?
Thank you for your question. I would like to invite Mr. Wang, General Manager of Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations to comment and answer this question.
Mr. Wang speaking. Thank you for your question. Over a long time, we have seen frequent questions regarding the dividend payout ratio of our bank from some institutional investors and also individual investors through different channels. We would like to thank you for your question and also the attention given to our dividend payout ratio. Today I would like to give you an explanation as to the dividend payout ratio. Firstly, we think in recent years, dividend payout ratio of our bank has been maintained at around 30%. We think this level is quite reasonable. Since the IPO of our bank, we have all together created over RMB 1.2 trillion cash dividends to our investors. Since 2007, we have been the highest dividend payout listed company in A-share market. In 2021, we.
The dividend payout ratio of our bank was 30.9% with a total number of cash dividends over RMB 104.5 billion, RMB 2.933 per every 10 stocks. Calculated with the stock price at the end of September this year, the dividend yield was over 6.7%, and for H shares is over 8.08%. This is higher than most term deposits and wealth management deposits. Of the net assets per shares have also been increased several times compared to that of IPO. Secondly, China now is their market reliance with indirect financing. For large banks, we need ample and steady capital supplements to support our asset growth and to better serve the real economy.
We have to set aside relevant number, a reasonable number of undistributed earnings to support our future growth. The profit retention is the major approach for supplementary for our capital supplement. That can also guarantee us to create more value and profits for the investors. Thirdly, we have seen the recognition from our global investors on current dividend payout ratio. We believe in the future we can create more future new value for investors.
Thank you for your attention and question. I would like to add on to his answer. We are seeing frequent questions raising from the online platform of SSE from our individual customers why ICBC hasn't raised the level of dividend payout ratio.
We believe 30% is the reasonable level of dividend payout ratio for the banks, because we think it is a common level, considering the features of large banks. It's unlike some other SOEs like Shenhua and each group, because they have no requirements in terms of their capital adequacy ratio. However, for large commercial banks like ICBC, we have to ensure our capital adequacy ratio so as to offset any potential risk in the future. Secondly, only adequate capitals of our bank can support their business growth, asset growth, and to provide necessary support to the real economy side. Thirdly, only adequate capital adequacy ratio can offset and mitigate any potential risks in the future, and can also provide better guarantee for the bank to create more value in the future.
If we distribute most of the profits to dividend payout, that will limit us in the future for our business growth. We think a reasonable dividend payout ratio can also meet the short-term and the long-term interests of our customer, investors, and can also leave adequate capital for the bank for value growth in the future. You might also notice the difference between Chinese banks and U.S. banks, because in the U.S., the financing structure is mainly direct financing, and in China, on the contrary, the majority part is indirect financing. The financial market is. Structure is different. Maybe after some transition and development of China's financial market, there will be lower requirements for the capital adequacy ratio of Chinese banks in the future. Thank you again for your attention.
Before this meeting, we have disclosed the announcement and also published a list of the questions from our email box. Let's welcome the email address, questions. The management of ICBC. I would like to ask, in terms of the lending to the property sector, is there any risk of bad debt? How will you deal with this such kind of risk? Credit Management Department will answer your question from two perspectives. The first part is the understanding on the market, and the second part is ICBC's practice. The first part. China is still in the progress of urbanization. The urbanization rate is over 60%. However, the average global ratio is around 72, 70%. There's still some progress space.
Last year, several high geared real estate companies have defaulted, and the real estate markets have been going down. Since the 2 quarter last year, the state and provincial government has launched several policies to promote the benign circulation and healthy development of real estate industry, especially the recent 16 Measures. These policies have effectively improved the financing capabilities of relevant real estate companies. Market expectations are gradually recovering. The risks or the diffusion of credit risk in real estate industry has been a better tendency. This is from the market side. On the side of ICBC, we have been safely implementing the real estate macro control policy and maintain stable credit support to real estate industry in an orderly manner.
With effective risk separation, we extend reasonable support to high quality projects, especially ordinary commercial housing, security housing and rental housing, et cetera. Promote risk diffusion in this region. We collaborate with local governments providing financial support, guarantee property delivery. At the same time, we make our own plan to diffuse relevant risks inside the bank. We stick to the principles of balancing incrementals and risks while maintaining stable credit to the real estate industry. We continuously enhance the investment and finance management in real estate industry, especially in compliance, collateral management, risk management, and to ensure the asset quality of relevant loans not going down. I'd like to add on this question. We have some information from the government to ensure the property delivery, ensure the people's well-being.
It has boosted the recovery of real estate markets, especially the M&A section of real estate industry and to diffuse the top real estate companies risk. All those policies focused on the ordinary commercial housing and young people's demand. Therefore, investors should notice that there would be some positive change for the real estate market. There have been some leaders from the Party Central Committee and the State Council to make clarifications and explanations about those policies. There would be optimization for the pricing limits, the loan limits, policies in different regions. Would you have concerns if there's any accumulating bad debts, and what would we do if such debt has happened? We will design a full set of measures to handle and diffuse relevant risk.
Thank you very much for your question. Welcome to the next question. The second question from previously solicited email questions from our individual investors. ICBC this year realized a double-digit asset growth. What's your outlook for 2023's asset and loan growth, and the allocation of corporate and retail site lending against the background of declining real estate industry and the shrinking demand from developer loans and market loans? What will be the main focus area for your lending in terms of the logistics properties or infrastructure or pension real estate?
The General Manager, Mr. Zhou, from ALM department will answer your question. The asset growth of ICBC and also loan growth is generally related with the information with the macro environment and also the economic growth of China.
In 2023, we predict the total assets will continue the stable growth, which will be correspond in match with the nominal economic growth rate. The incremental loans will also basically the same level as this year, which is relevant with the development of real economy and the funding, our market share, our risk management capability. As to further enhance our market competitiveness of our incremental loans. We mainly take into consideration of several risks. First, steady growth will be the keynote for next year's work, as next year is the first year to implement the 20th National Congress of CPC. We have seen recently the Central Economic Work Conference and Political Bureau conference all emphasized next year's work will be expanding the domestic demand and further deepening of the supply side structural reform. We think that will boost the market information.
However, the economic recovery foundation is still unbalanced. We have to consider the effect of the slower pace of developed economies on their interest rate hiking and the overall steady CPI domestically. The monetary policy might be more enhanced to guide the commercial banks to increase their lending to support the very tense economy to recover to the pre-pandemic level. Secondly, we expect to see an effective rebound of financing demand. We have seen focus on the recovery and expanding consumption to be a priority by the Central Economic Conference. We expect to see some key projects of 14th Five-Year Plan period and some key construction projects will promote the demand of financing and also some supporting policies regarding the property sector will also bring certain recovery to the real estate market.
Consumption demand from residents will also be released. Thirdly, ICBC has strong financial service capability. We are quite strong at our marketing and have a rich reservation for quality projects, so we are better positioned to acquire more market opportunities. Just now, you also touched upon the specific lending industries for our next year's growth. We will continue to be adapted to the economic development tendency with our credit allocation. For example, we will continue to focus on the key projects of the 14th Five-Year Plan period and also the key projects to stabilize the economic growth by focusing on some hydraulic engineering, transportation, energy, city gas pipeline, affordable housing and other infrastructure area. We will also focus on education, medical care, senior care, and also to provide better service to some new citizens.
For example, we can provide more quality consumption loans and bank card overdraft and to promote commonwealth. Now I'd like to invite Mr. Hu from Credit Department to answer the second part of your question.
I'm Mr. Hu from the Credit Department. I would like to add on to the real estate question. Because of the bad signal from Mr. Hu, I would like to answer your second part of the question. Like Mr. Zhou said, from the corporate and retail side, the corporate will still play a dominant part of our total lending. In the retail, we expect to see a growth from mortgages as well as retail consumption. Because with the policies to stabilize employment and economic growth playing out, there will be more stimulus to the consumers.
For the more specific area, we expect to see manufacturing, strategic new industry and green credit, inclusive finance, including those lending relevant with agriculture and rural areas. Also other key projects in the infrastructure area in the course of urbanization and renewable power projects, transportation, logistics, all will be the key sector for our credit extension. In your question, you mentioned about the logistics property, infrastructure and return properties. These are also the targets for our corporate lending, and we will make more efforts to grow our credits in these areas. At the same time, we do not only consider lending to these areas, we also place an important part in terms of other financial services like leasing, advisories, investment banking to our customers. As to make our contribution to the economic recovery. Thank you for your question.
Next question, please. That's one.
Good afternoon to the management of ICBC. I'm from CNBC . I would like to ask a question about the stock price of ICBC, because it has always at a low level. Have you considered any measures to stabilize your stock price? Have you ever considered of stock repurchase?
Corporate Strategy and Investor Relations Department will answer this question.
It's normal for share price to go down since this year, share of ICBC has been moving in the same page with our peers. Nothing special to notice. Despite the price much lower than the net asset value per share, the P/B ratio outperforms that of our peer banks. From the perspective of shareholders structure, most of our significant shareholders remain stable.
Some of the market's institutional investors also bought in more of our shares recently. We believe this buy-in decision was based on the confidence of future growth of ICBC. As you just asked, what are the measures we are going to take to stabilize share price? We think no matter our share repurchases or other market cap management, the essence of share price stabilization is to wedge our a-advantages to constantly improving our business return. On one hand, we enhance our support to real economy, stabilize growth market and expectations. On the other hand, we enhance our own high-quality development in the current circumstances. We will continue to enhance the strategic layouts to strengthen our advantages, make up for weaknesses, consolidate our foundations and basis to strive for balance and realize value creation, market competition, risk management, and capital cells regulation for ICBC.
We believe with the ongoing development of Chinese capital markets, there will be more and more global investors understanding the Chinese features of our economy and realizing the investment value of ICBC and other excellent financial institutions. As for the shares repurchase in the later transition of our articles of association, we have to then specially revise some clause as to provide institutional guidance to share repurchase if time's right. Next step, ICBC will continue to lift our operation quality, further enhance investors relations management, enrich the market cap management tools. We do not have any disclosures on when will be the proper time to repurchase our share. Thank you very much for your attention. There are many investors who care a lot about the share price and relevant arrangements of our shares.
the shares of ICBC, as a large bank is not the same as tech company shares, which is still growing. We are a value investment. We focus on active IR management and the quality of our operations as well as the market recognition. We focus on the long-term sustainable development and the strategic capabilities of ICBC a bit so. Therefore, the evaluation of ICBC as a listed company or a good listed company is all round. We have many long-term value investors. Especially recent years, we have some important investors to buying more shares of ICBC. Recently, I believe you all noticed that the evaluation and P/B of Chinese capital markets, there should be more research on the logic of valuation of Chinese market and Chinese company stocks.
As to reveal the inertial value of our stock market to our investors. In the next step, we hope the market will transform more into the direction of value creation. We hope there would be an optimization of investors structure. To boost the value of outstanding listed companies and so the listed companies could contribute more to the economic development of Chinese economy. ICBC respects our investors and will deepen the transparency of our disclosure. We will take various measures to improve our stock performance. We will collaborate with market partners to elevate the value of our stocks.
Thank you very much for your question again. One last question, please. Next question comes from UBS. Yeah, Xin-Yao Ng.
Thank you for the opportunity to raise questions. Also thank you for organizing today's investor conference. I'd like to follow on the request, the question of directing with the property industries. We have seen the regulators are putting in place multiple policies to support the property sector. We have seen ICBC have signed cooperation agreements with developers for the total amount in both over RMB 600 billion. I would like to ask, to what extent the specific number among those intentional financing will become realized? To what kind of forms? Like, what will be the precise percentage of lendings will be mortgaged or pledged loans or non-pledged or collateral loans? What size will be the domestic bonds or offshore bonds? How much of them will be guaranteed?
By what time will be the financing completed? What will be the NPL ratio of the developer loans? Are there any upstream or downstream industries relating with the property sectors? Have you seen the signals of the NPL ratio rise from these kind of industries relevant with property?
I would like to invite Mr. Hu from corporate department.
About the agreement signing with developers. In November 24th, we have signed cooperation agreement with 12 national property developers, including Vanke Gemdale Group, Greentown China Holdings, Longfor Group , Midea Real Estate Holdings, Radiance Holdings Group, China Overseas Land & Property, Poly Development, China Merchants Property Development, China Resources Land, Overseas Chinese Town Group, with the intention of financing amount over RMB 650 billion. After the signing of our ceremony as the head office, all branches now are also signing agreements with local enterprises, property developers. By December 16th, our 10 branches have signed agreements with local developers with intention of financing amounted to RMB 646.8 billion.
According to our agreement, cooperation agreement, we will provide our financing and making use of our fund, funding channel and services and focusing on developer loans, mortgages, and then the A loans for the property developers to rent their housing, letter of guarantee for pre-sale supervision funds, bond underwriting investment, overseas loans with domestic guarantee, and to conduct comprehensive partnership with central SOEs, local SOEs, mixed ownership enterprises and as well as private enterprises to meet their reasonable financing demands. As to when the financing will be completed and realized, it depends on the actual situation of every individual project. Since the beginning of this year, we have implemented the policy of preventing against the pandemic, stabilizing the economic growth and to develop securely and safely.
We played our contribution, our big bank role and our leading role to stabilize the economy and to support the guarantee of housing delivery and guarantee of livelihood and stability. As to the NPL ratio of relevant industry, I would leave to other department to answer questions.
Dr. Guan speaking. I want to add on to Mr. Hu's answer. As to the intentional financing to the property developers, after the signing ceremony, we think it will take some time for us to provide.
Relevant financial financing to the developers. We will, as always, conduct our standardized and criteria in our lending. First, all those partners we have signed agreement are prime customers of our bank. I think in this restructuring phase of the property developers, some property developers which are not so strong might be phased out by the market. We are focusing on the prime property developers and the intention of financing to the property developers, including those on-balance sheet and off-balance sheet, domestic and offshore lending, as well as bonds. You asked us about the upstream and downstream industries relating with the real estate industry. We expect to see the impact on them because of the volatility of the property industries. We do think they will have pressure. For example, the construction industry will face pressure.
For ICBC, we do not have such a large exposure to the construction industries. Some of our peers, which have a relatively larger exposure to construction industry, might face bigger pressure in this regard, and particularly for those mid-sized and the small-sized banks. Thirdly, about the new policies to support the property developers by the government and regulators. I think those measures are focusing on the transformation of property developers under the new era. That also represents opportunities for the big property developers. Actually, 3 years ago, many investors asked us about the real estate industry, which has been too heated and played too big role in our economic growth. Investors have always given great importance to the property sector. I think this is. We are in a phase of transformation for our economic growth as well as our asset and lending structure.
We expect to see divergency in the property sector. The strong ones will become stronger. The weak ones will be phased out. Thank you for your question.
Next question from Securities of Bank of China.
Thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. My question is about NIM. We have seen the Q3 NIM contraction has been slower. Could you please give us some color as to what factors lead to that contraction from the asset side and the liability side? We have seen a lot of factors that will play a role in the NIM. For example, the loan and deposit pricing have been lowered. What will be the pricing reason impacted our NIM, and what's your outlook for next year's NIM against the background of tougher for the demand deposits? General Manager Mr.
Zhou, from the Assets and Liabilities Management Department will answer your question.
Thank you very much for your question. As for the question of your influence factors for the downward trends of net interest margin for Q3. In relation with the common pressure of NIM going down in Q3, the velocity of this decrease has been narrowing. This is due to two types of reasons. The first is from the asset end. ICBC fulfills its responsibility to enlarge credit expansion to improve asset structure so as to ease the NIM narrowing pressure. The proportion of credit assets goes up in the interest-bearing assets affected by the structure optimization upward yield of affects assets. The Q3 yield on interest-bearing assets was up by two BP. The other one is from the liability side.
ICBC actively implemented the market adjustment regime of depo-deposit rates, as well as some other measures. Therefore, the interest rate payment ratio has declined by 1 BP compared with the first half of this year. We will take other measures to expand our customer base, which will increase the deposits sales. From the side of our loans, there would be some repricing influence. Since December of 2021, we have seen 4 times of decreases of LPRs, which has already been priced in. However, there are still in long-term loans with repricing risks. However, individual housing loans held by ICBC has been already repriced. We are pricing the diversified housing policies and rate adjustments for property loans. Therefore, we forecast a smaller influence in 2023 compared with this year and our peers.
For deposits, the repricing influence on NIM would be mild. Firstly, state-owned banks all decreased the deposit rates by 5 to 13 BP in September. It will further benefit the interest rate structure by reducing interest expenses. With the implementation of repricing for the time deposits, and especially for medium to long-term deposits, the effectiveness of adjustments of deposit rates will further dissolve. Secondly, due to the slowdown of economy, the decrease of deposit interest rates, as well as the proportion of the current and demand deposits declined. We were facing with pressure of our NIM going down. With the economic recovery, this pressure will be much eased. This year, until the end of the third quarter, we forecast the downward tendency of the NIM for our interest-bearing assets would be slowed down.
In the short term or next year, we read from the Central Economic Work Conference, we still face with triple pressures of our economic development. The NIM for the loans end will not recover very soon. We should put more efforts on implementing the principle of sustainability in loan pricing. Next year, compared with this year, there would be some positive recovering policies to recover the market, which would be a positive factor. As for the deposit side, we should enhance the GPC compliance implementation. Enhance client base, improve business ecology, elevate services capacity, and to stabilize and optimize assets and liability structures, remaining our leading position among peers. There would be some maturity changes in the structure of our loans and deposits. We would strike to cope with the downward trends of NIM.
However, as I just said. We will try our best to remain our leading position in NIM levels among our peers.
Next question, please. Thank you to Dr. Guan and management of ICBC. I would like to raise a question about the risk. If now Dr. Guan also touched upon the risk management, I would like to ask about the risk management of local government debt in the Central Economic Work Conference, has also put proposed to prevent and mitigate relevant risk. What is the asset quality of the LGFV? From specific regions, what is existing risk in northeastern parts and mid and central and western parts of China?
Thank you for the question. I would like to invite Mr. Li, General Manager of Credit Department, to take your question.
Thank you for your question. Indeed, as you mentioned in the Central Economic Work Conference, it was pointed out that the risk of local government debt has been emphasized from ICBC. The asset quality of our lending to local government has been maintained relatively good, and it's better than the average asset quality of the entire lending mixture. For some certain local government with heavy debt ratio, the asset quality of LGFV face pressure. In this kind of regions, we persist with commercial principles. We mainly focus on declining local government with relatively good debt ratio, so as to now ensure the risks are manageable and controllable. For the existing LGFV, we enhance communication with local government to coordinate with their budgets and funding to orderly deal with relevant potential risks.
Currently, I personally expect to see the improvement of the entire financing environment next year. The reasons for my confidence comes from the optimization of the pre-pandemic prevention and control measures, and also the government's unremitted confidence and persistence in developing and stabilizing economic growth next year. The expenditure of local government next year for pandemic prevention will be smaller, so that can also be conducive to the recovery of local government budget. Also the income for local government next year will be improved. Together with the improvement of consumption demand and sentiment, we believe the financing and funding environment for LGFV will also be optimized and improved. Currently, the relevant risk for our bank is totally manageable and controllable. Secondly, with regards to the improvement of relevant environment for the LGFV, we think relevant risk can be better mitigated.
Next question. Also the last question, please. Next question, please.
Next question comes from Bright Smart Securities. Thank you to the management of ICBC. I'd like to ask you a question about the short housing situation. Is the problem properly tackled so far? Because of the early service of mortgage faced large pressure, so what's your view on the lowering of HSBC mortgage interest rates, and what's your view on the recovery of the mortgage long term?
This is Zhang from Personal Banking Department who will answer your question. This is an important question. Speaking of the loan suspension events, ICBC has attached great attention to this event and organized a special committee to deal with relevant issues. We collaborate with real estate developers as well as other clients to prudently solve the relevant questions and problems. As you notice, the latest notice for financial institutions to support the stable and healthy development of real estate industry and other regulations, we will follow the lead of the Party Central Committee and State Council to implement those policies and do our best to better arrange these kind of events, notes.
After the voice of reducing mortgage interest rates, we haven't received any formal notice from our regulators. If there will be any such notice, we will put it into full implementation, especially for our clients who are suffering from the difficulties of repayment. It will also be our measure and our responsibility to fulfill our social responsibility and reduce our clients' interest payment burden so as to better serve our clients' loan for a better life. We would like to combine with our financial businesses, together with the needs of our clients.
Due to the limited time, that's all for the Q&A session. Thank you, particularly for the support from SSE and also the Investor Services Center from China Securities. Thank you for your support and supervision on our investor relations management work. I would also like to thank you for over 100 global investors to take part in today's online investor call. Recently, in Beijing, it's kind of severe situation in COVID, in the pandemic. Most of them have been affected and now it's kind of tough for us and we believe this situation will soon end. Thank you again for taking part in today's call. The winter will never last. We have seen the optimization of the pandemic control measures. Next year, we have seen the government's importance to stabilize the economic growth, employment and consumer prices.
We believe all those multiple policies will play out, it's quite likely for us to see a redundant of economic growth. Although we still face some uncertainties of the geological situation and also other monetary policy divergences around the globe, we are quite confident in the improvement of our economic growth next year. The management of our bank now are working on the planning of next year's business growth. We are also quite confident that we can still deliver our satisfactory answers to our investors as always. Thank you to our investors, I would like also to wish a merry Christmas to our global investors and a happy New Year to our domestic investors. Thank you again for your support. Now I'd like to turn the floor to Mr. Wang Lin Chun, the host of today's call. Thank you to Dr.
Guan for his remarks. Thank you again for all investors and analysts to join in today's call, and thank you for your questions. The management of our bank now answered your question, I believe, which can help us to make better judgment in terms of investing. Thank you again for your long-term trust and support to our bank and also long-term value investing in our stock. For any further questions, please contact our IR team via email box, hotline, and also the information platform over SSE. We will continue to conduct various types of communication with our investors. Best wishes to you all. Thank you. That's all for today's call.