Continued Innovation Accelerated the Rapid Growth of ICBC E-banking

Walking past the year 2005, all ICBC E-banking business services witnessed momentum growth. Successive good news were ringing on the year, in particular, notable results were achieved in innovating the ICBC brand, product and service. These achievements had played one major share on the innovation of China E-banking.

According to ICBC statistics, by the end of November 2005, number of ICBC Personal Internet Banking customers reached a record of 15.4 million, trading volume from January to November was RMB 523.7 billion. Number of Corporate Internet Banking customers broke through 300,000 with trading volume of RMB 38 trillion. Business volume of ICBC E-banking was already over a quarter of that of the whole bank. Market share of ICBC E-banking was definitely on the top of all Internet Banking of domestic counterparts.

This year, ICBC concentrated efforts in a series of new brands as "ICBC e-Fortune Link" and "USB-Shield", launched under a rich panoply of brands with "Financial e-Channel" as the main brand coupled with sub-brands of "Banking@Home" of Personal Internet Banking and "ICBC e-Fortune Link" of Corporate Internet Banking.

Amongst, sub-brand "ICBC e-Fortune Link" is traced to the same origin with "Financial e-Channel" of ICBC E-banking and "Banking@Home" of Personal Internet Banking. "Fortune" represents a wide spectrum of assets management and investment financing services offered to customer. "E" stands for "Yi" (a Chinese character meaning "easy", pronounced as "e" as well), vividly describe that this is a fast, simple and convenient electronic banking channel.

"Fortune" and "e" stay together, "Fortune" comes because of "e", a perfect allegory to describe that ICBC Corporate Internet Banking is a service of strong feature, simple operation, high quality and widely usage. Brand "USB-Shield" is the name given to the client certificate for ICBC Internet Banking.

It is an effective measure against Internet fraud and theft such as faked websites or "network fishing". USB-Shield is a patented "Intelligent Guard" firstly launched in China to ensure the security of Internet Banking.

ICBC spent huge efforts on the innovation of E-banking product functions when perfecting its own brand series. Many functions in Internet Banking are optimized for customer convenience. ICBC has developed online common payment function for corporate customers, who haven't set up websites or databases yet, to help them collect fees.

Any corporate customer can enjoy this function and collect payments from company or person nationwide through ICBC Internet Banking. And for those corporate or personal customers who have registered ICBC Internet Banking and want to make payment, they can just complete every payment online at anytime and anywhere by a simple click.

In addition, ICBC also opened Online Fixed Deposit and Corporate E-statement services for corporate customer to conveniently manage their money online.

ICBC also launched Peony Card Auto-Repayment Function this year. Since it opened, any customer of Peony International Card and Credit Card with USB-Shield can fully enjoy the convenience and special offers that Credit Card brings with its a long interest-free period (25-56 days). Cardholders no longer need to worry about the interest penalty if forget the repayment date.

Bank-Finance Link is a new Internet Banking function developed by ICBC in line with the centralized payment reform of central fiscal treasury fund. In this new system, all central budgeting units can check the own department's fund payments through ICBC banking platform in real time and combination. Head Offices of budgeting units can also easily dynamically monitor and manage the fund payments of their subsidiary units.

With consideration of cooperation and development with domestic renowned e-commerce companies during design of new products, ICBC launched E-Card Co-brand card and bundled payment service. Customer holding E-Card Co-brand card can enjoy all kinds of product offers from co-brand websites in addition to the services of ICBC Peony Money Link Card.

To corporate customers who collect payments periodically such as companies operating online games, instant messaging software and email boxes, personal customer can have his/her bankcard bundled with the collecting account of co-operative websites after applying for this service by just signing a payment agreement to realize regularly payment.

In 2005, ICBC has taken hard endeavors in the service innovation of ICBC E-banking. Management flows were optimized incessantly. Internal supervision and management were strengthened. Customer security service measures were improved, such as the promotion of USB-Shield and the Reserved Information Verification service first launched in China.

Such Reserved Information Verification is a function for personal customer who make payment or sign agreement online, a information, which was set before in Personal Internet Banking or business office of ICBC, will be re-displayed to help customer verify the authenticity of the website in order to avoid the problem of fake ICBC websites.

Real-time Balance Change Reminding Service of short message was another close secure safeguard measure that ICBC offered to customer. Personal customer will immediately be informed of any changes in account by ICBC short message to his/her mobile, no matter the transactions are deposit or withdrawal, transfer or remittance, card spending or investment financing. This is a service to let customer feel secure and peace of the accounts.

In website building, a new website (www.icbc-ltd.com) was also formally opened to introduce the establishment of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited. Till now, ICBC has established a two-level website service system with ICBC Limited website as the main site and that of all branch organizations as the sub-sites. The main website of ICBC Limited has undertaken the major task of publishing ICBC corporate image all over the world and disclosing its information to international capital market Every sub-websites are responsible for promoting ICBC business services in domestic areas or regions, and providing Internet Banking transaction services as well.

Successive innovations in brand, product and services led ICBC E-banking stand in front among domestic counterparts in customer numbers and business volume. Wide recognition was received from mass customers and media. Results from latest survey report of Internet Banking users' behavior published by state authoritative financial security certification organization -- China Financial Certification Authority (CFCA) and third party iResearch Market Consultancy, showed that ICBC Internet Banking is the most frequently used at present, for both personal and corporate customer.

Among the current Personal Internet Banking customers, 52.4% use ICBC Internet Banking, and 58.8% of Corporate Internet Banking customers choose ICBC. Potential customers also have a strong tendency to choose ICBC Internet Banking products. 57.1% of potential corporate customers wish to use ICBC Internet Banking.

For personal customers who plan to use Internet Banking, 69.9% are much willingly to choose to use ICBC Internet Banking.

ICBC E-banking has already had its name spread in China and all over the world. In 2005, ICBC has received numerous awards, such as "Best Personal Internet Bank of China" by American journal Global Finance. This was the third time that ICBC received such award. ICBC also won two awards again as the First of "Excellence Banking Website" and "Best Online Transaction Security Website" in the sixth investors favored "China Excellence Financial-Economic Securities Website" selection.

In the results of "2005 China Customer Care Yardstick Company Selection" just announced, ICBC finally singled out among all the participating companies and received the Golden Award of "China Customer Care and Public Services Yardstick Company". ICBC was in the first place on the winning list. All these awards indicated that ICBC Internet Banking has gained considerable recognition in China and all over the world.

2005 was a year that ICBC E-banking flourished, a year that concluded the past and opened to the future. It was also a year of successive innovation. According to the statement from person-in-charge of ICBC E-banking Department, there will be a series of innovated products launched in 2006, such as Transnational Financing, USD Account Gold Trading and Bank-Enterprise Account Checking Service.

ICBC E-banking will continuingly step up its self-development and improvement while continue to satisfy customer needs and set sail for the accelerated development of China E-banking on the wheel of innovation.