In recent years, ICBC has continued to strengthen corporate governance to establish and improve its corporate operating mechanism. Statistics show that during 2014, the Bank won 18 major corporate governance awards worldwide, leading its domestic peers by both number and level of awards. The awards included the “Platinum Award for All-Round Excellence” granted by The Asset magazine; “China Securities Golden Bauhinia Awards – the Best Listed Company in Corporate Governance” granted by Ta Kung Pao; “Icon on Corporate Governance” granted by the Corporate Governance Asia magazine; and “Citation for Corporate Governance Disclosure” granted by Hong Kong Management Association.

According to an ICBC official, since its joint-stock reform, the Bank has consistently regarded the improvement of corporate governance as the underpinnings to boost its core competitiveness, strictly complied with domestic and overseas regulatory requirements, optimized its corporate governance framework and mechanism by using successful experiences of international financial enterprises, further modernized financial enterprise system, and continued to improve corporate governance and risk management levels group-wide.

On corporate governance framework, by focusing on becoming a modern financial enterprise, ICBC has continued to improve the basic corporate governance framework comprising the General Meeting of Shareholders, the Board of Directors, the Board of Supervisors and Senior Management. Meanwhile, by strengthening the development of basic corporate governance rules, it has optimized authorization management, unclogged the communication channels within its governance framework, and formed a governance operation mechanism featuring scientific decision-making, effective supervision and stable operation. In 2014, guided by the objective of streamlining for high efficiency and serving overall strategies, ICBC implemented reforms in the Head Office and across its domestic institutions, which further optimized bank-wide organizational structure.

On corporate governance operation, the Bank has played out the pivotal function of the Board of Directors in strategic decision making and corporate governance, and stepped up efforts to build a duty performance supporting mechanism for the Board, ensuring duty performance by the Board in compliance with laws and regulations, and fulfillment of major reform and transformation objectives of the Group. In addition, by activating the supervisory role of the Board of Supervisors, the Bank has stepped up onsite inspection of substantive risk supervision, compliance of financial revenues and expenditures, and utilization efficiency of financial resources, and reinforced supervision of the soundness and effectiveness of its internal control system.

On risk management, the Bank has put in place an enterprise risk management system consisting of the Board of Directors and its special committees, Senior Management and its special committees, risk management departments and internal audit departments; strictly reviewed its risk management strategies, policies, preferences and internal control process, and implemented all-encompassing and quantifiable risk management in line with bank-wide development strategies. Furthermore, it has continuously strengthened the construction of an independent and vertical internal audit system and internal control system led by the Board of Directors, and ensured the stability of asset quality and solid control over various risks.

On information disclosure, by taking an investor demand-oriented approach, the Bank has persistently advanced voluntary information disclosure and enhanced corporate transparency, and effectively safeguarded shareholders’ right to be informed. In 2014, ICBC disclosed 4 regular reports, 329 provisional announcements and related documents in Chinese and English, as well as its first annual report on capital adequacy ratio. It also revealed, for the first time, 12 assessment indicators as a global systemically important bank, making it one of the first commercial banks to do so in China.