OREANDA-NEWS. June 27, 2011. Over the past few years, ICBC makes successive milestones for its asset custody business after all the efforts spent in the innovation of custody product offering and expansion of service range. ICBC has over RMB 3 trillion in assets under custody as of today. ICBC retains its first place in consecutive years in the domestic ranking and reinforces its market-leading position as the "No. 1 custodian bank in China". In particular, ICBC holds top spot in custodian services for securities investment fund, insurance assets, corporate annuity funds, cross-border assets, exclusive wealth management for fund companies.

ICBC was the first bank in the country to launch custodian services in 1998, said an executive with ICBC. Since then, ICBC adheres to the principle of "trustworthy, credible, industrious, responsible" to bring its asset custody business by leaps and bounds backed by the Bank's IT strength, innovation, domain expertise and professional staff. Today, ICBC has a full range of asset custody products encompassing different market segments (banking, securities, insurance and industries) and serving both the institutional investors and retail investors. In 2011, while gathering momentum in custodian services for funds, insurance, trust, annuity funds, ICBC also steps up its product innovation and focuses on the emerging custodian services, such as custody service for Anxin account, RMB wealth management, asset management plan for brokers' customers and equity investment fund. Beginning from this year, ICBC has 18 new securities investment funds under custody, accounting for 25.35% of the new funds issued in the market. Insurance assets and corporate annuity funds under custody at ICBC were up 10.23% and 21% respectively from the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, ICBC is extending its custodian services by looking at being the first bank in the country to offer other value-added custodian services such as performance evaluation and risk management.

ICBC's custodian service network is extending from Head Office to all branches nationwide, from local custody to global custody while maintaining rapid and balanced growth of the business. A domestic network for custodian services is currently in place with 37 tier-1/direct branches opening custodian services. Meanwhile, ICBC sets its sight on global custodian services by spending efforts to build a global network. Over the past few years, ICBC opened asset custody services in ICBC Asia, ICBC London, and ICBC Seoul in succession. Meanwhile, ICBC also establishes close ties with many well-known global custodian banks to set up its global custody service network, and steadfastly moves forward its global custodian services with special focus for QFII and QDII.

This year, ICBC won all the three awards for the "2010 Best Custodian Bank of China" respectively from three respected financial publications (Global Finance (US), Global Custodian (UK) and The Assets (HK)) for the Bank's excellence in providing custodian services to the domestic and overseas customers. This is also the fifth year in a row that ICBC receives the three awards, a confirmation from the industry and market on ICBC's outstanding performance in custodian services.