New rules released by the China Banking Regulatory Commission on Wednesday said that such non-standard investments should not exceed 35 percent of a bank's wealth management products or 4 percent of the bank's total assets at the end of the previous year.

Zhang said the bank's wealth management products were worth a total of 279 billion yuan, which indicated that it has nearly 54 billion yuan to remove from non-standard investments.

Zhu attributed the slower-than-expected profit growth to the increase of more than 3 billion yuan in its provision for bad loans in the fourth quarter of 2012. "It's normal that our lending costs would increase as the provision goes up."

By the end of last year its ratio of the provision to total loans stood at 2.12 percent, still below the regulator's criteria of 2.5 percent.

Zhu said the bank would strengthen its efforts to reclaim soured loans through a number of measures in 2013. "We hope to reclaim bad loans of 6 billion yuan this year, compared to 2.7 billion yuan in 2012."

Its lending to small businesses, regarded as loans with higher risks, rose 26 percent, or 43.8 billion yuan, in 2012.

The CBRC issued a guideline on Friday encouraging lenders to extend more loans to small businesses. It also said that if small businesses account for more than 60 percent of a bank's clients, the lender would be allowed to set up multiple outlets at the same time in that city.

wangxiaotian@chinadaily.com.cn