Unlike the past few years, prices of precious metals in international market swung sharply in choppy trade during the first six months of 2013 over market speculation of the U.S. economic recovery and QE (quantitative easing) exit worldwide. In view of this, ICBC took a different approach and launched new products in line with market demands. Impressive growth has been achieved by providing better services for precious metals investment. For the period ending June, 2013, ICBC achieved a precious metals turnover of nearly RMB 700 billion, up 22% compared with the same period last year and a sales volume of 63,400 tons, representing a 34% growth year-on-year. The total number of ICBC precious metal customers surged 3.5 million, or 36% year-on-year to 13 million. ICBC leads all other banks in China in terms of above indexes.

The stellar performance and high customer satisfaction during the first six months of 2013 were primarily due to the five major precious metals businesses.

In terms of physical precious metals, "Family Love Season", "Thanksgiving Season", "College Entrance Exam Season" and "Dragon Boat Festival" represented a range of marketing campaigns launched by ICBC for investment products with the themes of famous mountains or culture. Sales volume climbed to a three-year high.

With regard to trading-related business, "Accrual Gold", a core product provided by ICBC for corporate and personal customers to invest in gold, meets market demands for physical gold during the peak period when the product scale exceeds100 tons, 14 times as much as a year earlier. Via enhancing precious metals proxy trade business, ICBC helped gold exchanges to achieve a sales volume of over 41,000 tons, a 34% increase year-on-year. On financing business, ICBC created an innovative portfolio of “leasing + derivatives” to help gold producers or gold users hedge against market risk and reduce production cost. With a 62% increase in turnover from a year ago, ICBC leasing service provides strong support to real economy. In H1 2013, ICBC issued 9 tranches of "Enjoy Return - RMB Gold Arbitrage", a new wealth management product, to retail investors to realize stable portfolio allocation. As to proprietary trading, ICBC applies accommodative trading strategy and assumes the responsibility of a large bank to balance supply and demand in domestic market and to stabilize market price by selling gold on a consignment basis.

Market participants said gold and silver prices will keep swinging in choppy trade in the short-term due to macro economic policy changes by major economies, as well as the interlink between precious metals and commodity market with global stock, bond and forex markets. Precious metals market will be driven by strong demands for investment and physical metals over a mid- to long-term from the perspective of both supply-demand balance of physical metals and uncertainties in international monetary system. In the upcoming six months, ICBC will roll out a range of new products according to market trends and improve investment services to meet different needs of different customers.