October 13 ICBC hosted the "Bank-Enterprise Seminar on China-Africa Cross-Border Cash Management" in Wuhan, Hubei. At the Seminar, ICBC launched the China-Africa cross-border cash management platform jointly developed with The Standard Bank of South Africa and the Africa service solutions. This is the first financial product in the country serving the cross-border cash management activities between China and African countries and creates a new model for Chinese and African countries to manage cash across the borders directly.
Industry insiders comment the launch and application of the platform will bring two benefits. The first is the delivery of advanced, highly efficient services in the management of overseas funds for more and more Chinese companies going to Africa and customers engaging business between China and Africa. The other benefit is the improved treasury management in Chinese enterprises.
At the Seminar, two large group corporations signed global cash management agreement with ICBC to use the China-Africa cross-border cash management platform. An executive from one company said that in a group, direct management on company funds for projects in various African countries is difficult due to differences in economic, financial rules and tax regimes among these countries.
Now, ICBC's China-Africa cross-border cash management platform offers companies an option to monitor in real-time the capital movements in African projects and manage overseas accounts. This will reduce financial risk and increase company's core competence.
An executive with ICBC said, China-Africa cross-border cash management platform offers access to the headquarters of Chinese enterprises to retrieve information in real-time on their African subsidiaries' accounts through ICBC Internet Banking. In this way, the headquarters can get a full picture on the changes in internal funds, manage all payments from one place, reduce payment cost and control risk reasonably.
Companies can also make use of the platform for several purposes: allocate cross-border funds and manage cash pool as necessary, adjust cash balance or shortfall across the borders, speed up cash turnover, increase the efficiency in the use of funds, reduce financial cost and enhance the management of funds.
Besides, for companies who have the intention to invest further in Africa, ICBC and The Standard Bank of South Africa will together provide full range of information services and support to them covering FX, taxation and liquidity management, leveraging on the two banks' extensive service network, professional staff and rich experience in overseas operation.
More and more Chinese companies set their stone in Africa to tap into growing trade flows between China and African countries. In an effort to deliver better financial services to the Chinese enterprises in Africa, ICBC and The Standard Bank of South Africa have worked in partnership on cash management business since the establishment of strategic alliance in March, 2008.
Joint efforts were spent to develop a new platform across China and Africa for liquidity operation, information management and product innovation, aiming to build a service system for customers to centrally manage their funds across the borders in an integrated, tailored and automatic fashion.
In recent years, ICBC has set up a global cash management service network and stepped up its service capability in order to better serve the "go global" Chinese enterprises. ICBC is shaping up its global network by having 181 overseas branches and subsidiaries located within 22 countries/regions and a network of 1424 correspondent banks in 128 countries/regions by the end of June.
Meanwhile, ICBC is the first bank in the country to launch global cash management service. A multi-banking, multi-currency, multi-lingual system platform is in place to support all the domestic and overseas branches across different time zones, and a team of professional staff with different skills is ready to serve all the corporate clients in cash management involving different business areas and banks across the world.
As of the end of August, 2010, ICBC scored more than 450,000 cash management customers at home and abroad, topping the domestic league tables in terms of market shares and service standard. ICBC has for many years in succession winning Awards for "Best Cash Management Bank in China", "Best RMB Cash Management Services (China)" from respected media publications as The Asset, Finance Asia, Asiamoney.
