OREANDA-NEWS.  June 19, 2014. The inaugural meeting of the Document Center Working Team under Banking Committee of China Chamber of International Commerce (ICC China) has been recently held in Beijing along with its first working conference, during which ICBC was appointed as the first rotating chairman.

The Document Center Working Team is the first industry body for China’s document centers and provides a platform for the industrywide exchange of building experience and business management of document centers, which will help China’s banking industry have a bigger say in formulating international rules and handling disputes.

According to an executive with ICBC, through inter-bank sharing and research, the Document Center Working Team under Banking Committee of ICC China will make the development of document centers adapt to and meet international best practices, customer needs, and change of market environment, and play a more important role in the trade and financial development of commercial banks.

Document center is a centralized document business processing model widely adopted by the international banking industry nowadays. Through the most advanced computer technology and image transmission technology, this model can concentrate international settlement and trade finance business scattering among global branches  into a document center for processing, which can improve work efficiency, reduce operating costs, control operational risk and promote operation standards. ICBC is one of the first domestic commercial banks that have set up a document center and the first to achieve the centralized processing of document business among large commercial banks in China. In May, 2006, ICBC set up the International Documents Settlement Center consisting of two back-office centralized processing sub-centers in Hefei and Chengdu for international settlement and trade finance business.

The Center is responsible for back-office processing of international settlement and trade finance business of ICBC’s domestic and overseas institutions. By leveraging the global centralized operation platform, the bank has improved efficiency and result of international settlement and trade finance business. So far, ICBC has put the document system into operation in all domestic and overseas institutions, and succeeded in achieving centralized processing of document business worldwide. The number of domestic and overseas centralized acquiring banks has amounted to 340 with 1,062 acquiring offices. It has become the first bank in China that has finished the concentration of all international settlement and trade finance business, establishing its leading position in centralized management of international business.