September 17th, Beijing - ICBC and Shanghai Municipal Government signed the official Strategic Cooperation Memorandum ("Memorandum") to join hands to open a new chapter in the construction of Shanghai into "Two Centers". Signatory guests at the signing ceremony were: Mr. Yu Zhengsheng, Member of Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Secretary of Shanghai Municipal Committee of the CPC; Mr. Han Zheng, Deputy Secretary of Shanghai Municipal Committee of the CPC and Shanghai Mayor; ICBC Chairman of the Board Mr. Jiang Jianqing and President Mr. Yang Kaisheng.
The "Memorandum" stipulates the items of strategic concern between the two parties. ICBC vows to put State's macroeconomic policy into practice and lends intensive support to Shanghai's economic restructuring. The bank will steer the course with the municipal government in many areas including key industry projects, financial innovation and sound financial environment.
Meanwhile, Shanghai Municipal Government stands behind ICBC and all its subsidiaries in the city, offering all the convenience in helping the bank to spread its wings and pulling together all the resources to help ICBC to build a platform to work closely with the enterprises. The municipal government will not hesitate to support ICBC to get the best and brightest and give them full play to their talent in the financial world.
Meanwhile, ICBC's competitive edges in interbank market, excellence in information technology, product innovation and sound capital base underscore the success of ICBC in offering fast, convenient and quality banking services to all companies in Shanghai, amongst, corporate annuity, bond underwriting, cash management, bank card, international services and investment banking, etc.
Being the largest commercial bank in China, ICBC has been a stalwart in Shanghai's reform and economic development and always involves in the city's major industrial and infrastructure projects. At the same time ICBC remains committed in bringing quality banking services to small and medium enterprise and public utilities.
As of end of August this year, ICBC Shanghai branch's RMB loan balances reached RMB 342.2 billion. From January to August this year, RMB loan of the branch surged RMB 52 billion, a year-on-year growth of 250%. From 2003 till today, the stellar performance pushes ICBC at the top of two league tables of total loan size and increase scale.
ICBC, having a presence of over 500 outlets and more than 2400 ATM in Shanghai and a powerful Internet Banking, is ready to serve every customer. ICBC is "A bank around you, a bank that you can always rely on".
All through the years ICBC attaches high importance in supporting Shanghai as an international financial center and is a major force behind. ICBC established a large data center in Shanghai as early as 1999. In 2004, all the bank's data was centralized and integrated in this data center, which is now the only centralized service processing center of ICBC in China.
Every day, the data center averagely processes 100 million transactions. In 2001, ICBC set up its Bill Department in Shanghai, the first such banking department in China specialized in bill service. Since then, a network of 8 more sub-departments was set up nationwide for the past eight years. During the first eight months of this year, ICBC generated a cumulative business volume of bills of over RMB 1 trillion.
Currently, ICBC Bill Department in Shanghai is the largest of its kind in China. In 2008, ICBC set up its Private Banking Department in Shanghai to serve for the most high-end customers. Today, ICBC secures over 4200 private banking customers. Assets under ICBC management surpass RMB 40 billion. Shortly before that, ICBC put up Precious Metals Department, another first of its kind in China dedicated for the service, as an increased effort to lay the foundation for the Precious Metals Center in Shanghai.
Shanghai is also the testing ground for ICBC new products, where the bank has a software development center in place for the research and development. Today, with more than 2300 banking products in its arsenal, ICBC cements its position as the No.1 financial institution in China offering the most complete and most varied products.
During the first half of this year, State Council issued a Decision on "Speed up Shanghai's Modern Service and Advanced Manufacturing, establish Shanghai as an International Financial Center and International Shipping Center". From the high perspective, the Decision thrashed out a strategic blueprint in how to transform Shanghai economic development model, how to upgrade its industry structure and how to adjust its regional economic layout. Facing with such new great opportunity, ICBC is on the road again to embark numerous programs to support the construction of Shanghai into "Two Centers".
First: Maintain ICBC momentum in Shanghai's major industrial and infrastructure projects, support small and medium enterprises to grow and development of Shanghai's education, medical and health sector. To help Shanghai's key projects, important industries and companies to raise funds, ICBC gives all-inclusive and all-intensive banking support encompassing project financing, syndicated loans, mergers and reorganization, asset management and financial advisors. In furtherance of Shanghai's economic restructuring and upgrade, ICBC sets the green credit policy in motion. Priority is given to projects concerning energy savings, pollution reduction and environmental protection. Upgrade in industry and technology are areas to be closely followed up with special focus on 9 new high-tech industries: new energy, civil aviation manufacturing, advanced equipment, bio-medical, electronic information manufacturing, new energy automobile, marine engineering equipment, new material, software and information services.
Second: Ignite a clean up spiral to improve efficiency of financial services by substantial margin and enhance all service functions. By dint of its own cutting-edge network system, information and strong capital base, ICBC strives to offer fast, convenient and quality banking services to all companies in Shanghai, covering corporate annuity, bond underwriting, cash management, bank card, international services and investment banking.
In the pipeline is a multi-dimensional, integrated financial service system where there will be a host of platforms in place in Shanghai to serve for settlement and custodian of funds involving bond trading, asset custody, clearing of precious metal and settlement of financial futures.
Third: To transform Shanghai into an International Financial Center, concerted move has been taken to pull the strings of all general banking services and professional banking services. With the new Precious Metals Department set up in Shanghai recently and direct subsidiaries already in stone in the city, ICBC has now a hub of "Five Centers" (Bill Service Center, Private Banking Center, Precious Metal Service Center, Software Development Center, Data Operation Center) spinning around to propel Shanghai's goal of international financial center into reality.
Fourth: Shanghai will be taken as the testing ground for ICBC new products. Innovation in products and services spanning across different organizations, different markets or different services will be intensified by taking advantage of Shanghai capital market, factor market, inter-bank market and over-the-counter market. All pilots and trials will be carried out in Shanghai first. Those that will be taken the lead to be pushed into market include services for new bond market, precious metal, financial derivatives, RMB cross-border settlement and shipping finance.
