OREANDA-NEWS. September 01, 2014. To further regulate the prices of banking services and protect the legitimate rights and interests of financial consumers, ICBC has officially released the Price List for Services of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (2014 Version).

ICBC’s new version of service price list displays clearly the serial number of all chargeable items, name of service items, service price, service content, target customers and preferential measures item by item, so as to ensure financial consumers' right to know and to choose. The new price list shows the following changes in terms of service items:

Firstly, according to the government's latest policies, the Bank has adjusted and improved service items related to government set or guided prices. Thirteen service items with government set or guided prices including interbank OTC transfer and remittance, personal cash remittance, individual inter-city OTC cash withdrawal and cheque-related fee are charged strictly in accordance with relevant government regulations. Meanwhile, for service items often used by retail customers and within the scope of market-regulated prices such as personal inter-city transfer and remittance, personal cash deposits, personal deposit/withdrawal through self-service channels, and personal interbank transfer and remittance through self-service channels, the Bank has revised down the original charging standards.

Secondly, after fully considering the interest and affordability of the general public, the Bank has cut or exempted charges on services with bearable costs. For instance, ICBC has revoked charges on such services as corporate account balance management, cross-border inquiry, and agency mortgage registration. It continues to offer free service on 109 items closely related to the production and livelihood of enterprises and individuals including account opening/cancellation for debit cards, loss report and password reset for personal accounts, information inquiry for individual accounts, OTC fee payment by individual customers, credit card automatic repayment, and loss report on corporate bills. In addition, it has continued to waive annual fee and petty account management fee on frequently-used bank personal accounts, such as agency payroll, retirement pension, subsistence allowance, medical insurance, unemployment insurance, and housing provident fund. Meanwhile, based on the principle of "covering cost with low profit", ICBC continues to offer preferential prices for service items whose costs have been lowered due to technological progress like E-banking, so that customers can enjoy convenient financial services with lower prices, as well as the benefits from financial innovation and technological progress.

Thirdly, the Bank has enriched and improved certain services to better meet customers’ diversified financial service needs, strengthened its support to the real economy, balancing service and charging more reasonably by changing the charging rules on local/foreign currency financing letter of guarantee ("L/G") and non-financing L/G, and effectively reduced the burden on customers.

ICBC has developed the new service price list into uniform service price list manuals, which are available for customers at special shelves placed at a notable location in the lobby of all its outlets from August 1. At the same time, the Bank has released the enquiry & complaint hotline 95588 for service charges at its outlets and on the official website, subject to supervision by customers and the society.