Foreign Banks Roll Out Large-Denomination CDs, Some Rates Top Chinese Lenders

The foreign banks' willingness to pay up for onshore renminbi funding is the signal here: a 40bp premium over state-owned peers suggests they are competing harder for deposits rather than simply tracking the market. That matters most for rate-sensitive savers and for the pricing benchmark the large state lenders set, since a persistent gap would test how much deposit business can migrate toward foreign names. Whether the premium holds as more of these products launch, and whether state banks respond on pricing, is the open question.