The span–depth ratio of the transfer plate has a significant effect on the distribution of vertical stress in the wall. A similar structural behaviour to a transfer beam–shear wall system (Kuang and Puvvala, 1996) can be found that with increasing span–depth ratio the stress non-uniformity ratio decreases, showing that the influence of arching action becomes more severe. Moreover, with the increase in plate thickness, the maximum tensile stress of the transfer plate and the horizontally compressive stress in the shear wall will be decreased significantly. This is caused by the improvement of the system stiffness.