In Personal Banking, ICBC embarked aggressive plan to add innovative products and upgrade the services amid the most challenging economic conditions in 2009. While supporting the State's macro economic policy of "boost domestic demands and expand consumption", ICBC is gaining momentum on the business and securing the top spot of First Retail Bank in China. Up to the end of last year, ICBC was ahead of all the peers by a total of 216 million individual customers, over RMB 4.6 trillion of savings deposit balance, RMB 1.2 trillion of personal loan balance, and a total sale of RMB 1.53 trillion in wealth management products and nearly RMB 1.5 trillion of transactions conducted using ICBC bank cards. ICBC snapped three Asian Banker's awards because of its outstanding performance in personal banking services. The international flagship financial magazine named ICBC as the "Best Retail Bank in China", "Best Large-Scale Retail Bank in China" and "Best Personal Internet Banking in China" in "The Excellence in Retail Financial Services Awards Programme 2010". This is the eighth time that ICBC has been conferred with the honors by such respected ranking of Asian commercial banks. Winning the awards is a high confirmation of ICBC excellence in personal banking business from all.
ICBC remains committed to offering quality products for every individual customer, according to the ICBC spokesperson. ICBC takes its full strength in IT expertise to contribute towards client focus, providing innovative products and services to cater specially for this market segment and drive the business forward.
ICBC is the banking institution in the country offering the most number of financial products of all types, 311 new products just in the year 2009, 2366 product categories. To earn and preserve client preference, ICBC embraces originality and practicability in creating new innovative products. An example would be the Elite Club Account Chip Cards and Platinum Chip Credit Cards launched in September 2009.
ICBC is the first bank in China to launch such chip cards which are safer and come with more functions for easy and convenient banking by the customers. In terms of investment and wealth management, ICBC again is the first among the peers to launch a host of products for customers to choose from, including "Smart" Defined Fund Investment Plan, Link Express, Smart Fund Investment and Constant Dollar Plan.
Meanwhile, ICBC spent coordinated efforts in setting up different channels among physical outlets or via electronic banking. ICBC boosts a hierarchical, dimensional and diversified channel scheme as the main foundation for the personal banking business. For the past few years, ICBC has invested heavily in building new outlets and renovation of the old outlets.
By the year-end 2009, ICBC stepped up its service capability through its network of 15600 outlets, among them, 149 wealth management centers, 3488 VIP centers, 8017 wealth management outlets and 3938 banking kiosks. To ride with the tide of electronic services in a modern society, ICBC also took its electronic banking channels and service network a significant step higher.
Today, ICBC is the most prolific bank among the peers, having 8726 self-service banking outlets and 57000 ATM. The transaction volume of ICBC electronic banking in 2009 totaled RMB 181 trillion. It was the first time that electronic banking transactions surpassed those processed at the Counter to 50.
13% of ICBC business volume. This effectively boosts the service efficiency.
Based on this, ICBC aspires to perfection and wishes to "Let Customer Satisfy". Henceforth, a host of new strategic measures were taken to improve services. New campaign - "Service Innovation Year", "Olympic Service Year", "Service Improvement Year", was launched every year to push the frontier of change in service standard for delivering good user experience to customers.
The integration and optimization of business processes beginning from 2007 was a fruitful attempt. A total of 137 critical issues affecting the service efficiency and quality have been addressed. Simple procedures and short transaction time let customers spend less time at the Counter. Take Beijing Branch as an example.
After restructuring of the flow, the rate of completing a service in 30 minutes has been drastically improved from 64.8% to 93.6%.
To push ahead the personal banking business, highly qualified, highly professional staffs are the key. ICBC customer managers, increasing in number, are a team of dedicated, well-trained staff. Up to end of 2009, ICBC has more than 30000 customer managers. Among them, 11500 are Associated Financial Planners (AFP) and 1876 Certified Financial Planners (CFP), representing 22.
7% and 30.2% of all AFP and CFP working in the banks in China. ICBC continues to be the No. 1 bank in the country having the highest number of AFP and CFP on the payroll. Meanwhile, ICBC offers intensive training to front-line staff in the outlets based on the customer traffic and types. ICBC encourages customer managers to sit for certification examination in order to forge a qualified, competent team with strong awareness to serve customers.
Moreover, ICBC also established a Telephone Banking Center housed with thousands of call representatives to answer customer inquiries.
