On August 6, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) introduced its accelerating implementation of the Internet-based finance strategy on the banking sector’s regular press briefing. Since the beginning of this year, ICBC has seized historic opportunities arising from the new “Internet +” economic pattern, and leveraged its advantages in credibility, technology and finance to speed up the implementation of the Internet-based finance strategy. The rapidly growing Internet-based finance business, mainly composed of three platforms and three product lines, has become a new engine of ICBC’s business transformation and development, better satisfying needs for transformation and upgrading of the real economy, business startup and innovation.

Rapid and healthy development of three platforms and three product lines of Internet-based finance

Guided by the e-ICBC Internet-based finance development strategy and oriented to customer needs, ICBC launched the innovative “ICBC e-Buy” e-commerce platform, the instant messaging platform “eConnect” and the direct banking platform as well as an Internet-based finance product system mainly consisting of three product lines, i.e. payment product, financing product and investment & wealth management product. The combination of excellent offline services and efficient online services provides good service experience and high value added for all customers and helps ICBC realize scale effects and explosive growth.

During the first half year, “ICBC e-Buy” e-commerce platform posted a cumulative transaction volume of RMB 204.4 billion, representing a 26.8-fold increase year on year, and has developed into a comprehensive versatile e-commerce platform covering B2C, B2B and B2G. The real-time messaging platform “eConnect” saw the number of users hit 1.3 million, while the direct banking platform had a total transaction volume of over RMB23 billion, showing a gaining momentum. The quick payment tool “ICBC e-Payment” had over 60 million customers and a total transaction volume of over RMB 80 billion, 5.4 times of the same period of last year, and its capacity of handling over 10 million simultaneous transactions per second is unrivaled in the industry. The balance of “Easy Loan”, a personal unsecured loan product for online and offline consumption, exceeded RMB 190 billion. Designed to satisfy small and medium-sized enterprises’ “short-term, frequent and urgent” financing needs, the Internet loan product “Online Revolving Loan” continued to be the single Internet financing product with the largest amount in China, with over RMB 1.73 trillion cumulatively extended to over 70,000 SMEs and a balance of over RMB 200 billion. Cumulatively a total of RMB 8.73 billion has been granted by far through the “Corporate Easy Loan”, an unsecured loan product invented based on the big data technology. The online “Personal Self-Service Pledged Loans” of RMB 38.2 billion have been granted with a balance of RMB 24.7 billion, 4.6 times of that at the beginning of the year. Besides, online investment businesses as account-based precious metal, account-based crude oil, account-based base metal and account-based agricultural product have also seen rapid growth, among which account-based crude oil had a transaction volume of RMB 56.7 billion, a 30.5-fold growth year on year. Moreover, ICBC’s e-Link, a wealth management product that allows T+0 real-time subscription and redemption, is on the steady rise and well received among customers.

In pushing the integrated development of finance and Internet, ICBC’s advantages in technology and funding as well as the advantages as a bank in credibility, data and online and offline integrated services show an increasing importance. With these advantages, it offers excellent service experience to customers. “ICBC e-Buy” e-commerce platform targeting at renowned merchants, stores and commodities has high standards of qualification and quality for merchants and products. Over 70% of the merchants on the platform are direct distributing factories, and top ten brands in the digital industry, household electric appliances, clothing and accessories and tourism have stationed on the platform, whose registered customers have exceeded 20 million. Using its advanced data collection and data mining technologies, ICBC took initiatives in offering credit facilities to over 100 million personal customers, and pushing rapid and healthy development of the personal credit business including installment payment on the credit card. Besides, based on effective control of risks, ICBC continuously improved its credit services for corporate customers. ICBC made good use of its worldwide business network, online and offline, to render customers individualized and differentiated financial services. Meanwhile, it made gradual intelligent renovation on its existing outlets with Internet concepts and technologies so as to realize integrated services featuring “one-point access, interaction of online and offline channels, all-process response”. During the first half of this year, ICBC activated free WIFI service at over 15,000 domestic outlets, built 154 smart banks, and launched the O2O shopping week campaign through the “ICBC e-Buy” e-commerce platform at 431 outlets under 35 branches throughout the country. Besides, the Bank also vigorously explored everyday consumption scenes needed by customers, and actively stepped up building an offline store cluster “ICBC e-Life” covering clothing, food, shelter, consumer goods and transportation. An Internet eco-system featuring interaction and openness among customers, merchants and the Bank has taken shape through building a front-end interface online for cooperative merchants, sending customers information on preferential treatments in the locality and rendering a full range of offline financial services to cooperative merchants by ICBC outlets. This model brings “customers to merchants and preferential benefits to customers”, and deeply integrates ICBC’s Internet-based finance products into customers’ offline consumption scenes.

Interconnected with enterprises, ICBC contributes to accelerating realization of “Internet +” for the real economy.

When developing Internet-based finance, ICBC has seized market opportunities coming along with the profound application of innovative Internet achievements in all economic and social fields, and with an open, sharing, innovative and inclusive attitude, fully utilized its own technology and platform advantages to get interconnected with all sorts of enterprises, helping them realize “Internet +” and boosting quality and efficiency of the real economy.

In the e-commerce service field, through “ICBC e-Buy” e-commerce platform, ICBC has actively explored new e-commerce models in bank-government cooperation. It worked with the Yunnan Dali government to launch the “ICBC e-Buy e-commerce platform Dali Tourism Season”, successfully hosted the “Qixia E-commerce Cherry Feast” in cooperation with the Shandong Qixia municipal government, and signed a cooperation agreement with the Heilongjiang organic food trading center, bringing local high-quality specialty products to more consumers. To make it easier for residents to buy properties, the “ICBC e-Buy” e-commerce platform worked with 14 well-known property enterprises such as Vanke, Greentown, Poly, Evergrande and R&F Properties to build an “Internet + property” model in the interest of all parties. By far, over 300 property projects in 60-odd Chinese cities have been launched on the platform, resulting in cumulative sales of over 1,800 properties and a transaction volume of over RMB5.1 billion. ICBC also worked with China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) to provide a full range of whole-process chain services for the over-RMB600 billion annual purchase of CSCEC and its subsidiaries, creating the first new business model of “Internet + construction + finance”.

In the financing service field, ICBC has positively promoted the integrated development of financial services and Internet technologies, and launched a series of innovative Internet financing products suitable for SMEs, including Online Revolving Loan and e-Supply Chain Finance and Corporate Easy Loan, meeting the financing needs of SMEs and lowering their funding costs. For instance, the “Online Revolving Loan” is an online self-service revolving loan service designed specifically for SMEs. By signing a borrowing contract, they can complete application for, withdrawal and repayment of loans within the validity of the contract. This product perfectly satisfies SMEs’ usually short-term, frequent and urgent financing needs. Moreover, ICBC’s innovative big data-based financing product “Corporate Easy Loan” adopts the instant lending service model featuring “instant access right after card swiping”. Through translating data into assessable value, the product solves funding needs of SMEs in production and operation. During the first half year, ICBC signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Baidu to provide comprehensive quality and efficient financial services such as intent of financing and investment banking for Baidu and its associated enterprises and customers of Baidu platform.

In the cross-border financial service field, ICBC gave full play to its advantages in internationalized operation and information technology to actively promote overseas development of its Internet-based finance business, with a current customer penetration ratio of nearly 50% in terms of overseas personal Internet banking and corporate Internet banking. Big stride has been made into the cross-border e-commerce field. The “ICBC e-Buy” e-commerce platform has been connected with the China (Hangzhou) cross-border e-commerce comprehensive experimental zone, and an e-commerce service and operation system integrating order information, logistics information and payment information has taken shape to enable completely automatic push and processing of information among the ICBC e-Buy” e-commerce platform, bonded warehouses and electronic port. The Spanish shopping mall of “ICBC e-Buy” e-commerce platform was launched into operation in July to provide over 200 kinds of made-in-Spain maternal and baby supplies, skin care products and wholesome foods for domestic consumers. Meanwhile, ICBC is working hard to sell domestic quality commodities to overseas markets through “ICBC e-Buy” e-commerce platform, helping China transform from a “world factory” to a “world store”.

Three ICBC centers advance “Internet +” through mechanism innovation.

In order to accelerate the e-ICBC Internet-based finance development strategy, ICBC has set up the Internet Finance Marketing Center and Personal Credit Consumption Finance Center and prepared to build Online Financing Center, which are designed to make overall arrangements for Bank-wide marketing and operation management of Internet-based finance business, pushing specialized and centralized development of Internet-based finance.

By building specialized teams and integrating the whole Bank’s Internet-based finance marketing resources, ICBC’s Internet Finance Marketing Center is dedicated to overall arrangements for Bank-wide marketing and operation management of platforms and products related to Internet-based finance, direct online market expansion of relevant business and construction of a new-typed Internet-based finance marketing pattern that is specialized, top-down collaborative and online-offline integrative. The Personal Credit Consumption Finance Center is built to develop unpledged, unsecured, completely credit-based online consumption credit business through integrating the whole Bank’s personal consumer credit facility business. The Center works to integrate logistics, capital flow and information flow and precisely determine customers’ consumption footprints, financing needs and credit status by means of innovative service model and financial products. The perfect combination of “Consumption + Finance + Internet” brings customers brand new experiences and quality services and gives the general public access to consumer finance in the interest of the public. The Online Financing Center under preparation is designed to increase the convenience and availability of financing services to SMEs through developing and popularizing online financing services and employing Internet technologies to optimize the credit service model.