OREANDA-NEWS. February 17, 2012. In recent years, ICBC Bill Department leverages its competitive professional expertise to increase credit scale and allocate monetary resources for extending bill financing service to SMEs. While ensuring full availability of credit facility to SMEs, preferential interest rates are granted in a bid to address their issue of working capital shortage, reported the press-centre of ICBC.

In 2011, ICBC Bill Department has processed outright inter-bank discount of bills to a total of over RMB 100 billion. Nearly 70% cash generated was for SMEs. Moreover, ICBC Bill Department actively promotes bill discount service directly targeting at small and medium-sized enterprises. In 2011, the Department has discounted nearly 1000 bills for over 100 SMEs totaling nearly RMB 8 billion. While lending increasing support to the real economy, for the eleventh consecutive year ICBC Bill Department has kept a good record of zero percentage in accepting fraudulent bills, bad asset rate, fund loss rate and economic crime rate. This paves the way for the Department to sustain healthy growth on bill business.

ICBC Bill Department is the first institution dedicated to bills of exchange in the country. Since its inception in 2000, the Department remains committed to support real economy to drive its bill business and strives to be a professional bank providing bill finance for the real economy. Beginning from 2011, ICBC Bill Department focuses on R&D/innovation of new products and business portfolio optimization in line with the changes in external business environment. An example is the electronic bill financing service for SMEs to access "short-term, frequent, urgent" loans. Bill liquidity and business efficiency are much improved. The RMB 29 billion of electronic bill turnover in 2011 helped SMEs address their working capital shortage faster. ICBC Bill Department also provides professional bill services on bill verification, bill custody and bill collection for SMEs to manage bills.

Comprehensive bill services are launched while providing finance to the SMEs. One example was the training and seminar organized by the Department to assist financial persons from SMEs in checking new edition bills and sharing experience. This was a response to many SMEs who wished to gain more knowledge on the identification of 2010 new edition of true bank acceptance draft and risk control. The seminars helped SMEs prevent risk while conveying the latest method in checking bills.