OREANDA-NEWS. September 11, 2012. ICBC continues to post strong momentum in overseas business since January this year. Growth of assets and profits in overseas branches is faster than that of domestic branches. ICBC overseas branches had combined assets of USD 166.65 billion as of end of June, 2012, an increase of 33.6% over the end of 2011, up 23.3 percentage points against ICBC's total assets and 1.1 percentage points higher in the ratio to ICBC's total assets when compared to the percentage points at the end of 2011. When compared to the same period last year, pretax profit in ICBC overseas branches rose 17.6% to USD 864 million, up 5 percentage points against ICBC's pre-tax profits. As a result, ICBC has struck a good balance between stable profit and risk diversification, reported the press-centre of ICBC.

As related by an ICBC executive, 2012 is the 20th year for ICBC to expand its global reach. For the past two decades, ICBC spread effort on a global scale, supporting overseas subsidiaries gear up for more challenging global competitiveness to meet the demand of financial services from the customers for their fast growth worldwide. ICBC's global advance is marked by its strong momentum in scale, quality and efficiency, while ensuring services are provided to customers in different markets across the globe.

In building up a global network, during the first six months of 2012, ICBC Europe, a wholly owned subsidiary of ICBC, received the official approval from Polish Financial Supervision Authority ("PFSA") to open a branch in Warsaw. This means ICBC is the first Chinese bank to receive permission to operate in Poland. ICBC also gained the approval from the US Federal Reserve to buy a controlling stake in Bank of East Asia's US unit up to 80%, marking the first acquisition of a controlling stake in a U.S. commercial bank by a Chinese bank. As of today, ICBC has a global network of 252 overseas branches spreading 34 countries/territories.

This global service platform, together with a presence in Africa through holding a 20% stake in the Standard Bank of South Africa, covers all the major international financial centers and China's trading regions with well-defined hierarchy, reasonable positioning, diversified channels and efficient operation. ICBC's network of 1,591 correspondent banks in 137 countries/regions is important for the Bank to spread its wings outside China, serving all customers around the world.
In IT platform set-up, the integrated business processing system for overseas branches (FOVA system) independently developed by ICBC was online in ICBC Asia during the first six months of 2012.

Up till now, all ICBC overseas branches have installed FOVA system, marking a new phase for the unified, online processing of all ICBC overseas businesses across the world. In 2006, ICBC started the program to develop FOVA with functions covering many business segments which include deposit, loan, remittance, bank card, internet banking, international settlement, trade finance and global market. With FOVA system, ICBC offers unified, standard financial services worldwide. Products are shared and launched in and outside China at the same time. Overseas branches manage risk through FOVA's hard control. Since 2006, ICBC set up trade processing center so that all international settlements from oversees branches, which are linked to trade processing center, can be processed centrally. In terms of integrated processing of international banking services, ICBC edges ahead all other banks in China.

In serving customers across the globe, ICBC makes use of FOVA and multi-license of overseas branches to expand key product lines of domestic branches overseas, leading to fast, balanced and coordinated growth of all businesses in overseas branches. ICBC quickens the pace of launching clearing center outside China. In the first half of 2012, clearing volume of ICBC clearing centers were: USD 717.3 billion (New York), EUR 539 billion (Frankfurt) and JPY 620.2 billion (Tokyo). ICBC set up Europe Cash Management Center in Paris, France. For the period ending June, 2012, ICBC had 2,879 global cash management customers. Thirty-three banks were working with ICBC to provide cash management services.

Right now, ICBC's overseas retail banking is proceeding at an impressive pace. At the end of June, 2012, ICBC overseas branches had over 610,000 personal customers. Both retail deposit and personal loans edged up significantly from end of previous year to reach USD 15.23 billion and USD 6.05 billion respectively. Growth of bank cards and electronic banking users remains robust. As of end of June 2012, ICBC has issued debit cards in 18 countries/territories, credit cards in 11 countries/territories, to a total of 430,000 cards. Meanwhile, to underline its objective to serve all customers, ICBC's overseas branches set up web portals in 33 countries/territories and opened internet banking services in 24 countries/territories, telephone banking call desk services in 11 countries/territories.