Bank of Communications says Chinese mortgage volume fell

Bank of Communications Co., China’s fourth-largest publicly traded lender, said it made fewer mortgage loans in February and March as the government seeks to rein in lending and curb property speculation. “We have had an obvious drop in volume over the last two months,” Dicky Yip, an executive vice-president at BoCom, as the bank is also known, said in an interview in Shanghai yesterday. He declined to give loan-volume figures. China’s bank regulator has told the nation’s larger banks to conduct quarterly stress tests on property loans and ensure risks are strictly controlled. Chinese banks extended a less- than-estimated 510.7bn yuan ($74.8bn) of new loans in March after the central bank told lenders to set aside larger reserves and pace credit growth.