OREANDA-NEWS. June 26, 2014. In recent years, by launching the mass-line education & practice activities and implementing its mission of "Serving Society, Delivering Excellence", BOC has earnestly followed the differentiated housing credit policy, taken effective measures to support lending to first-time house buyers, and strived to meet the demand of first-time buyers for ordinary commercial housing loans.

According to statistics, as of the end of April 2014, the balance of BOC's personal housing loans amounted to RMB1.35 trillion, representing an increase of RMB69 billion over the end of 2013, and accounting for 85% of all incremental personal loans, up 15 percentage points year on year. Of the personal housing loans granted this year, close to 90% were used to support first-time purchasing of owner-occupied ordinary commercial housing.

With the funding costs of the market climbing and pressure on profitability constantly rising, BOC, by fully considering financial sustainability and risk control factors, and applying the latest result of the Basel Accord, has priced personal housing loans in a reasonable and scientific manner, contained the interest rate at a reasonable level, and endeavored to mitigate the economic pressure on first-time house buyers.

BOC has even applied the decision-making engine technology to the review and approval of personal housing loans, and established a customer application rating model, and implemented standardized operations and centralized review to reduce artificial intervention, accelerate the approval speed, and ensure service efficiency and quality. At present, the Bank normally can complete approval of personal housing loans within several working days, in the condition that the borrower provides complete application materials and meets relevant credit conditions.

While underscoring its support of the personal housing loan business, BOC has actively strengthened risk management and risk identification throughout the lending process, exercised all-round risk monitoring by industry, region and customer, and managed to keep the non-performing loan ratio at a relatively low level.