OREANDA-NEWS. August 31, 2012. Since January this year, ICBC makes ongoing effort to provide professional, integrated pension fund services, evidenced by consistent improvements and innovation on the products and services. With 11.08 million personal pension fund accounts under management at the end of first half of 2012, ICBC was the first banking institution in China to manage personal pension fund accounts of more than 10 million. Meanwhile, ICBC secured its leading market position by having RMB 48.5 billion of pension fund under trust and RMB 207 billion of pension fund under custody, reported the press-centre of ICBC. 

Today, ICBC's pension fund services cover every aspect of China's pension scheme to meet the diversified needs of different types of customers, said an executive with ICBC. In pension fund business, ICBC secured over 32,000 corporate customers in 20+ industries until end of June, 2012. Among them, there are large corporations, small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) with employees only a few hundreds, a few dozens or a handful. To these SMEs, it is difficult to set up an annuity plan due to their small business scale, lack of professional staff and high cost. In light of this, ICBC launches "Ruyi Pension", a corporate annuity plan designed for SMEs and the staff, who can enjoy the same annuity management services as for the large corporations, safe, convenient and professional. "Ruyi Pension" comes with simple steps, standard procedures, good management, and a range of investment products for SMEs to choose. Today, ICBC offers "Ruyi Pension I", "Ruyi Pension II", "Ruyi Pension III" under the "Ruyi Pension" brand. Over 5,100 customers have signed up "Ruyi Pension" corporate annuity service. A total of 980,000 workers join the plan.

In 2011, ICBC rolled out "Ruyi Life", a social welfare plan for companies/government departments to provide benefits for their employees covering pension, medical and payroll services. Employee benefit plans and ICBC wealth management are combined for wide coverage, simple formalities, high security, transparency and stable investment return. "Ruyi Life" is well-suited for the companies/government departments to manage, preserve and increase the value of employee benefits funds.

On top of primary pension fund services, ICBC offers comprehensive financial services to better align with the demand of customers for coverage, investment return and services. Apart from corporate clients, ICBC targets at government departments, public institutions, social organizations and personal customers. In addition to corporate annuity, range of services extends to social security fund, pension funds of companies/public institutions, personal pension funds. Wealth management, pension benefit information management, information storage, enquiry and agency services are new services besides trust management, account management, fund custody and management custody. All these demonstrate the Bank's effort in strengthening its portfolio and service capacity.

China's social security scheme has been improved and upgraded in the last few years. Corporate annuity is an example of supplementary pension benefits, bringing more room for financial institutions to deliver pension fund services. ICBC was one of the earliest commercial banks in China to offer pension fund services. In 2005, ICBC was the first among the domestic peers to be certified as the account manager and the custodian bank for corporate annuity fund. Subsequently, ICBC obtained the certification of corporate trustee for corporate annuity. Together with the certification of investment management for corporate annuity fund owned by ICBC Credit Suisse Asset Management Co. Ltd., a holding subsidiary of ICBC, ICBC has "full license" for its corporate annuity business, offering a full range of services catering to customer needs.