OREANDA-NEWS. March 18, 2011. ICBC is rolling out a new service for personal customers to trade platinum nationwide starting recently, in response to the need of all to invest in precious metal. Earlier, the service became available in Tianjin, Jinan and Qingdao from January this year as a pilot. ICBC is the first among the commercial banks in China to open such service, reported the press-centre of ICBC.

An executive with ICBC said the opening of the service for individual buyers/sellers to trade platinum adds one more precious metal to ICBC's product offering, covering all the major precious metal categories in the international market: gold, silver and platinum. ICBC is the commercial bank in China offering the most number of investment categories of precious metals, longest trading hours and richest trading channels. With a trading volume of more than 12,000 tons of precious metal by personal accounts in 2010, ICBC occupies half of the market shares and is way ahead of the peers.

As related, under the new service, two categories of platinum are available for individual buyers/sellers: platinum (ounce) against USD and platinum (gram) against RMB. Customers are welcomed to open an account for trading platinum in ICBC. No fee is collected. Buying or selling platinum can be through ICBC Internet Banking, Telephone Banking or Mobile Banking (WAP), right at home every week starting from 07:00 am Monday till 04:00 am Saturday (except the national and public holidays) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Orders for buying/selling platinum can be placed from the shortest validity of 24 hours to 120 hours longest. Besides electronic banking channels, customers can also buy or sell platinum at the designated ICBC outlets during the banking hours. ICBC prices on buying/selling platinum through accounts are quoted in real-time and go along with the international market price, highly transparent. No delivery of physical metals after the transaction, eliminating the steps of warehousing, transportation or authentication. The new trading service is very convenient for retail investors.

In the opinion of the investment professionals, investors wish to invest in more precious metals in light of the booming trading market for precious metal in China over the past few years. ICBC being the first bank in the country to launch the platinum trading service for personal account brings more choices of precious metal for domestic retail investors and satisfies their rising need of buying/selling platinum. The threshold for minimum investment in platinum is low. In ICBC's service, the minimum quantity is 1 gram if buying or selling platinum in RMB 0.01 ounce for USD trades. The minimum investment amount is a little more than RMB 380 or USD 18 according to the current market price. Platinum price is very much affected by the situation of economy and automobile industry. In recent years, platinum begins to attract the attention of the investors in view of the surge in gold price and silver price. Especially the recent prices of silver, gold reach or near the historic high. The service of trading platinum through account offers a new investment choice, well-suited to experienced traders with higher risk appetite.

The next move of ICBC is to continue the effort to launch new precious metal products, said an executive with ICBC. Continual effort will be spent to offer more services and rich functions with an aim to better meet the need of the customers to buy or sell precious metal through account.