Ping An Bank signs partnership with Cinda

Shenzhen-based Ping An Bank Co announced Monday it has inked a partnership with China Cinda Asset Management Co, one of the nation's four bad loan managers, a move some analysts said may be linked to the mid-sized bank's heightened efforts to control bad loans.

Cooperation between the two sides will revolve around fields including credit offering, settlement, cash management, capital depository and non-performing assets.

The announcement came shortly after Ping An Bank's selling of special loss-absorbing bonds.

On Thursday, the Shenzhen-traded bank sold 10-year bonds worth 9 billion yuan ($1.47 billion) at an interest rate averaging 6.82 percent. The yield compares to the 10-year government bonds with a benchmark rate of 4.52 percent.

The higher yield is due to the bonds' involving more risks compared to other bank debts as the special bonds give investors weaker shields against failure, analysts said. The bank's motive for the cooperation is highly likely to be its intention to seek solutions to tackling bad loans, news portal qq.com reported Monday.

Ping An Bank was under rising pressure to write off bad loans over the course of 2013, although the bank posted a slight fall in its non-performing loan ratio by the year end, the report said, citing a research note from Wang Jian, an industry analyst at Zheshang Securities Co.

In its annual financial disclosure filed with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Friday, the bank said its non-performing loan ratio had been down by 0.06 percentage points from the beginning of 2013 to 0.89 percent at the year end.