OREANDA-NEWS. February 28, 2012. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, or ICBC, remains the world's biggest RMB settlement bank in 2011, reporting a record high RMB settlement volume of RMB1,350 trillion, increased by 54% from last year, reported the press-centre of ICBC.

While capital is the blood that ensures healthy operations of the real economy, the bank's settlement network is the blood vessels. As the largest commercial bank in China, ICBC has always been committed to offering safe and efficient settlement services to support the country's economic growth.

As related by an ICBC executive, the rapid development of ICBC's RMB settlement business in 2011 was first attributed to the constant growth of China's real economic activities and also closely related to the bank's continued endeavors to improve work efficiency and product innovation in settlement services to meet customer needs. In particular, as business activities and capital movements become increasingly complex in recent years, ICBC has rolled out and promoted the cash management services. Through a series of settlement product and service portfolios, ICBC managed to help customers improve financial management and reduce financial costs, which not only effectively catered to the businesses' settlement needs, but also added strong impetus to promote the bank's settlement business.

By end of 2011, ICBC has 660,000 customers for its cash management services, surging 30 percent from last year. Currently the bank's cash management services have extended along the external capital chain from serving the firm's internal needs, expanding from cash collection/payment and centralized cash management previously to comprehensive financial asset management services. An all-round cash management service system was in place offering account transaction management, liquidity management, supply chain finance, as well as wealth management and other financial services. Meanwhile, to accommodate Chinese businesses' needs of "going global", ICBC was the first Chinese bank that has launched global cash management services. ICBC established business partnerships with 2,232 customers, set up the Asia Pacific Cash Management Center in Hong Kong, and built the China-Africa cash management platform jointly with the Standard Bank of South Africa to provide "one-stop" cash management services for multinational corporate clients worldwide, including solutions for account management, centralized collection and payment, cash pool (in home and foreign currency), investment and financing, and risk management.

On top of these, in an effort to enhance its comprehensive service capabilities in the settlement business, ICBC has in recent years stepped up efforts in promoting services for companies in the same industry having very similar needs for banking' services. Based on the analysis of the rules and characteristics of customers within one industry on their needs for products, service channels and funds, ICBC has actively explored initiatives to offer cash management services to corporate customers in a particular industry. In 2011, ICBC rolled out comprehensive financial management services to the manufacturing sector. Through continuous product, service and process innovation, ICBC introduced new cash management models and products that appealed to the features of leading manufacturing customers to help their business transformation and technological upgrade. For instance, by supporting a new sales model in the equipment manufacturing industry that promoted the leasing and sales service, ICBC offered a tailored solution for Xuzhou Leasing Company under the XCMG Group to provide the equipment rental payback services and help list out the information of all lessees by its feature product of "Butler Service for Collection", effectively lifting the work efficiency in cash management of XCMG Leasing.