Fixed Income Wealth Management Products Losing Appeal? Multiple Product Issuances Face Setbacks

Financial products frequently encounter “failure” during issuance and are becoming a prominent phenomenon in the 2026 wealth management market. Recently, Beijing Business Daily reporters found that since the beginning of the year, leading wealth management institutions have issued notices of product cancellations. Fixed income products that once held the top spot in the wealth management market have repeatedly “failed” during the fundraising stage.

Analysts believe this is an inevitable result of intensified homogeneous competition among fixed income products in a low-interest-rate environment. Wealth management companies should proactively adjust their product strategies, shift from a product-centric to a customer-centric approach, expand investment boundaries, and rebuild investor confidence through differentiated product design and steady performance, thereby increasing fundraising success rates.

Frequent “failures” during issuance

In March, Huaxia Wealth Management repeatedly announced that several products would not be established. Six products, including “Fixed Income Debt-Type Closed-End Wealth Management Product No. 1317,” “Pure Debt Fixed Income Closed-End Wealth Management Product No. 354,” and “HeXiang Fixed Income Wealth Management Product No. 37,” all failed to reach the minimum issuance scale specified in their prospectuses and were terminated.

According to the product prospectuses, these six products are all closed-end, net-asset-value-based fixed income products, mainly with medium-low risk levels, generally stable. In terms of target investors, many of these products are open to both individual and institutional investors. The product terms vary widely, from as short as 97 days to nearly three years, covering short-, medium-, and long-term investment needs.

Regarding investment allocation, there is some differentiation. For example, “HeXiang Fixed Income Wealth Management Product No. 37” includes money market instruments, various debt assets, and a small amount of equity assets. The other five products focus solely on the fixed income track, mainly money market tools, standardized debt assets, and other fixed income financial instruments compliant with regulations. Most products set a minimum issuance scale of 50 million yuan, while the low-risk “Huaxia Wealth Fixed Income Debt-Type Closed-End Wealth Management Product No. 1381” has a lower threshold of 5 million yuan.

Further statistics by Beijing Business Daily show that this phenomenon is not isolated. Since the beginning of the year, Huaxia Wealth Management has terminated 14 products; in February, Boyin Wealth Management announced that its “CaiShouYou” series fixed income one-year closed-end products failed to reach the minimum fundraising scale; in January, Guangyin Wealth Management’s “Happiness Add-on” closed-end fixed income public offering product No. 3059 also failed to meet the minimum scale specified in its prospectus.

The analysis shows that these failed products are highly homogeneous, mainly focusing on closed-end fixed income products, with failures primarily due to not reaching the minimum fundraising scale. Regarding this, Wu Zewei, a special researcher at Su Commercial Bank, stated that this is not an isolated incident but an inevitable result of intensified homogeneous competition among fixed income products in a low-interest-rate environment. “As market yields continue to decline, traditional closed-end fixed income products become less attractive to investors. If wealth management firms continue to follow past scale-driven issuance rhythms, they will face difficulties in fundraising. This also indicates a certain mismatch between product offerings and capital supply in the wealth management market.”

Shifting from product-centric to customer-centric

From an industry perspective, as of the end of 2025, there were 159 banking institutions and 32 wealth management companies with active wealth management products nationwide, totaling 46,300 products, an increase of 14.89% from the beginning of the year; the total assets under management reached 33.29 trillion yuan, up 11.15%. The investor base has also expanded, with the number of investors holding wealth management products exceeding 143 million by year-end, a 14.37% increase from the start of the year. Among them, 17.69 million new individual investors and 310,000 new institutional investors.

So, why are stable fixed income wealth management products, which can serve as a “deposit transfer” pool, suddenly falling out of favor despite the overall prosperity of the wealth management market? Zhou Yiqin, a senior financial regulatory policy expert, explained, “Closed-end fixed income wealth management products have fixed lock-in periods, during which redemption is not possible, inherently limiting liquidity. Currently, investors generally do not want their funds to be locked up long-term, leading to low subscription willingness and making fundraising difficult.” Zhou pointed out that from the customer demand side, open-ended products are more favored; however, from the supply side, the issuance of closed-end fixed income products far exceeds that of open-ended ones, making failures more noticeable in the market.

Regarding the phenomenon of failed fundraising, Zhou Yiqin suggests viewing it rationally. It reflects a healthy development during the industry’s transformation, indicating more market-oriented competition and more refined operations. “Public funds tend to have higher success rates because their product registration requires significant resources, and they invest heavily in channels, marketing, and customer outreach to ensure success. Wealth management products, on the other hand, have lower issuance costs, simpler processes, and smaller sunk costs. Therefore, wealth management firms are less obsessed with ensuring issuance. If channel promotion is insufficient or product design does not meet market needs, and the product lacks core competitiveness, low market recognition can lead to unmet fundraising targets.”

Additionally, Zhou noted that this is also related to the market-oriented transformation of the distribution ecosystem. In earlier years, the predecessor of wealth management firms, the bank asset management departments, had a one-to-one distribution relationship with their parent banks, relying on internal channels to guarantee successful issuance. Now, as the distribution ecosystem diversifies, external channels expand, and performance assessments become more market-oriented, products are evaluated based on historical returns, risk control, and customer fit. Only high-quality products can secure channel resources, while mediocre products are naturally phased out.

From a regulatory perspective, wealth management products are required to have a clear minimum scale. If the fundraising amount falls significantly below this standard, the fixed costs of subsequent research, operations, and risk management will sharply increase. “Therefore, some wealth management firms rationally choose to let small-scale fundraising fail to avoid operational inefficiencies, which is also a sign of refined management,” Zhou emphasized.

Wu Zewei further pointed out that the overall growth of the wealth management market alongside the failure of new product fundraising confirms a structural shift of funds between institutions and products. Increased industry competition leads to a stronger siphoning effect by top-tier institutions, while the rising difficulty of fixed income asset allocation makes product yields harder to meet investor expectations, further exacerbating fundraising challenges for some products.

Wu suggested that wealth management firms should proactively adjust their product strategies, shifting from a product-centric to a customer-centric approach. They should optimize issuance pace, no longer blindly pursue quantity, but focus on accurately targeting customer risk-return preferences. Additionally, they should expand investment boundaries by moderately increasing multi-asset and multi-strategy allocations based on core fixed income holdings. Through differentiated product design and steady performance, they can rebuild investor confidence and improve fundraising success rates.

Beijing Business Daily Reporter Meng Fanxia and Zhou Yili