OREANDA-NEWS. August 14, 2013. Earlier, ICBC became the custodian bank for China's first corporate bond ETF securities investment fund. This makes ICBC the largest custodian bank in China as of today with over 800 billion fund shares in 315 funds under custody.

While maintaining a leading position in providing custody service for securities investment fund, ICBC embraces innovation to offer a full range of optimized products and services in line with the market demand. ICBC dominates the market on the back of impressive growth. Total assets under ICBC custody as of end of June this year reached RMB 4.265714 trillion, representing a year-on-year increase of 14.09%. For 15 years in succession ICBC sits on top of the domestic league table.

ICBC expands the market through the launch of innovative custody products. In the first half of the year, 2013, ICBC extends custodial services from capital market to real economy by offering custody service for many innovative fund products: first batch of bond ETF, first gold ETF, first batch of leveraged ETF, first rating fund, first batch of funds with floating fee and "Anxin Account (escrow account for single-purpose payment by pre-paid card holders)". In the first six months of 2013, ICBC was mandated as custodian bank for 40% of China's first batch of corporate annuity pension fund products and provided custody service for stock index futures. ICBC was the first bank to launch custody service such as investments on bills issued by fund management companies and debt investments, and custody service for bill assets. ICBC also integrated custody services and functions (purchase, redemption, registration, custody and value-added service) in order to loom large the service and enrich custody products.

Further, ICBC gathers its pace in expanding custody service worldwide through its global service network, demonstrated by the strong growth in cross-border custody services. In the first half of 2013, ICBC provided custody services for 6 new overseas Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFII), rolled out 83 new products for QDII and was mandated as custodian bank for RQFII by 14 foreign institions. When it comes to cross-border custody service in China, ICBC ranks No.1. ICBC's custody service network has been expanded by making custody services available in its overseas institutions like ICBC Asia, ICBC Financial Services LLC and ICBC Europe as of today.

The robust growth of ICBC's custody services in January-June period of 2013 owed very much to system innovation, business process restructuring, and service improvements. Especially in the first half of 2013, new systems and platform installed in ICBC included a new asset service outsourcing system, next-generation platform to serve online customers and bill registration system. At the same time, ICBC restructured business process in order to standardize and increase the efficiency of custody services from marketing to operation in all domestic and overseas ICBC branches. These new measures provide strong support to all ICBC's custody services.