OREANDA-NEWS. July 03, 2014. Since the beginning of 2014, by leveraging the “ICBC Merchant Friend Club” service platform, ICBC has consistently refined its exclusive personalized financial services to private enterprises, especially individual businesses.

According to statistics, as at the end of May, the membership of the Bank’s “ICBC Merchant Friend Club” totaled 13.42 million, representing an increase of 2.38 million, or 21.5% over the beginning of the year. This club service platform has formed a system covering financial products and services with diversified categories and complete functions ranging from settlement, financing, to wealth management, channel services and value-added services exclusively offered to club members.

The “ICBC Merchant Friend Club” is an innovative merchant service platform launched by ICBC through customer segmentation, new customer relations models and targeted product and service innovation, based on the fact that small merchants are highly concentrated in large commodity trading markets and industrial clusters. It aims to provide a series of exclusive financial services including settlement, financing and information consulting to meet the personalized needs of private enterprises, especially individual businesses. Since the establishment of the first “ICBC Merchant Friend Club” in Haining, Zhejiang, in April 2010, this service platform has been rapidly penetrating across the country with its appealing and convenient products and services. As at the end of May 2014, ICBC has established over 3,500 such clubs in 37 provinces, municipalities and regions nationwide, providing door-to-door services to merchants in over 5,000 commodity trading markets with a service network penetrating into county-level areas across the country.

According to an executive with ICBC, eligible merchant customers, upon filling in the membership registration form and joining the “ICBC Merchant Friend Club”, are entitled to the exclusive financial products exclusively designed to meet the varied needs of merchants, as well as preferential and superior financial services in terms of settlement charging standards, financing convenience and wealth management returns.

In addition, ICBC will continue with product innovation and service upgrading for commodity trading markets and merchant customers, and press ahead with the “merchant membership” themed campaigns. Furthermore, ICBC will vigorously promote the innovation of key products and services such as merchant club express, merchant club easy loan, and merchant club APP to build a financial ecosystem for the club members and better meet their diversified demand for financial services in production, operation, consumption and settlement.