NEW YORK - Chief Executive Officer of China Merchants Bank (CMB) Ma Weihua said on Wednesday that CMB will promote its transformation in the next three to five years amid new economic challenges.

Ma made the statement in his speech at the China Business Initiative Forum organized by the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia Business School.

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He said the transformation measures will include boosting financial innovation and improving non-interest income. Those measures were crucial because the problems of Chinese banks at present were the excess reliance on credit growth, interest income and large-size customers.

According to Ma, for most of the Chinese banks, the proportion of loans to small- and medium enterprises was less than 40 percent of the total, and loans to retail customers was less than 20 percent. The readings were much lower than banks in the EU and the US.

He also pointed out that Chinese banks were too reliant on external funding. From 2006 to 2010, commercial banks raised 1.15 trillion yuan ($175.3 billion) from the capital market, accounting for 4 percent of the total primary capital market in the same period.

"Chinese banks are facing profound changes in external environment," he added. "Economic growth rate will slow down, economic structural adjustment will also be furthered and the interest rate liberalization reform will be pressed ahead as well."

He emphasized that to deal with those new challenges, Chinese banks must get rid of those problems in order to succeed in the new era. for the CMB, the transformation will be the first thing in the next three to five years.