OREANDA-NEWS. February 03, 2014. In recent years, by leveraging its strength in expertise and comprehensiveness, ICBC has continued to improve pension-related financial service to help develop the sector. ICBC has over 12 million personal pension accounts under management as at the end of 2013, representing a market share of 50% among all banks in China.

Currently ICBC provides specialized pension service to nearly 40,000 companies, with RMB 54.6 billion of pension funds under management and RMB 284.8 billion of pension funds under custody, providing strong support  to China's pension system.

As China is gradually establishing a sustainable multi-layered social security system, supplementary pension benefit such as corporate annuity has seen rapid growth. Commercial banks are also vying to to consistently improve pension-related financial products and services. ICBC was the first commercial bank in China to be certified as the account manager and the custodian bank for corporate annuity fund, followed by the certification of corporate trustee for corporate annuity fund. 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 secured "full license" as a solid basis for the development of corporate annuity business.

ICBC pension service has now expanded from corporate annuity to occupational annuity, social insurance fund, pension insurance fund for enterprises/public institutions and personal retirement fund, with clients expanding from corporations to government bodies, public institutions, social organizations and personal customers. Services include fiduciary management, account management, fund custody, management consultancy, wealth management and agency service, covering all aspects of China's pension insurance system to meet the diverse needs of different types of pension customers.

ICBC has been focused on product innovation and optimization with commitment to provide featured service to different types of customers. For example, it is difficult for small-and-medium enterprises (SME) to set up an annuity plan due to limit in business size, lack of professional staff and high cost. In light of this, ICBC has launched "Ruyi Pension", a collective corporate annuity plan designed for SMEs to access reliable, convenient and professional annuity management service through simple procedure, standard management and diversified investment products. ICBC has now launched three standard SME annuity products, including "Ruyi Pension I", "Ruyi Pension II" and "Ruyi Pension III", to meet the needs of SMEs for pension financial service. At present, ICBC has corporate annuity funds worth RMB 2.79 billion under management with 5,522 registered SME clients.