In a recent ceremony jointly organized by Financial Times and China Association of Small and Medium Enterprises (CASME) to award the winners of "Second China SME Financing Forum & Annual Meeting of China SME Financial Services Strategy Cooperation Alliance", ICBC won the crown of "China Top Ten Institutions in SME Financial Services" for the bank's expertise in many areas of offering such services to small and medium enterprises as the service model, lending scale, product innovation, benefits achieved and brand influence.   

The Award gives credit to ICBC's recent years of engineering bank's growth trajectory of its financing services for SME, buttressed by overhaul in organization schemes and mechanisms, and innovation in system, product and flow. Since then, the service picks up the stirrings of change and gallops ahead, earning ICBC the plaudit of "Model Enterprise of Nationwide SME Financial Services" from China Banking Regulatory Commission in 2006 and 2007. As of end of July, 2009, SME balance financed is nearly RMB 2.3 trillion or 48.5% of the total to all corporate customers, rising by over 26% to a staggering increase of RMB 480 billion beginning from the year. The increase represents a 63% of the total growth of capital financing to corporate customers in the same period.