OREANDA-NEWS. January 15, 2015. “Time is like a fishing net. Where you cast it, there is a gain. This contest offers us, the post-90s college students, a good stage to get involved in the society and show our talents. Meanwhile, it also provides us with an excellent opportunity to experience the joy of working hard and making progress. It is a platform designed to encourage financial creative designs and practices among college students via bank-university cooperation,” said a contest participant from the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE).

On December 12, 2014, the finals for the Fifth “ICBC Cup” National College Financial Creative Design Contest was held in Beijing. Ten teams consisting of the post-90s college students showcased their thoughts and explorations on financial creative design through various forms, which brought a complete success to the contest.

This contest is themed with “Passionate Youth, Infinite Creativity”. Participants are required to propose financial creative designs based on client demand, market change and China’s current and future financial condition. Since launched in June 2014, this contest has attracted over 60,000 college students from more than 440 colleges throughout the country and received a total of over 1,600 entries. The participants applied the financial theories they learned into practices and came up with a variety of financial creative designs geared to the future market demands. As regards the Internet finance in particular, they designed an array of financial products based on college students’ actual needs including “micro & small loan and wealth management tool”, “college students’ private financial assistant”, “community-based financial services”, and “college students’ consumption and entrepreneurship platform”, all of which reflected the current students' concern for social issues, close attention to the frontier of financial industry, and pursuits for innovation.

On the basis of successful experience of the previous contest, new breakthroughs have been made in the content and competition mechanism of this contest. First, the competition scope has been expanded from the banking level to the whole financial field. Second, the competition for the mock trading of precious metals has been normalized and the competition time is increased to four months from the previous two months, which indicates more winning opportunities. Moreover, the real-time quotations of Shanghai Gold Exchange are adopted in the competition. The price limit as well as the margin ratio in the competition will be adjusted according to the latest notice of the exchange so that participants can have “real” investment operations. Some universities even have launched a course about the mock trading of precious metals and incorporated it into the young investor education. Third, the ICBC E-shopping electronic coupons worth hundreds of thousands yuan are given to participants, and organized the activity themed “New Semester Shopping Season” where they can experience the convenient, secure and diversified internet financial services. Fourth, the organizing committee of the contest capitalizes on the ICBC’s youth employment and entrepreneurial practice base and its financial practice center for college students to help participants enrich experience by means of internship in ICBC outlets. As some industry experts pointed out, the success of the fifth contest has further optimized the path of innovative talent cultivation via bank-university cooperation and initiated a new thinking to bring in social forces and collect wisdom of the public to expand bank product innovation, making the entire contest a new platform for college students to show their talents and realize their social value.

The contest won consistent support from the School and College Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China (CYLC), which calls for helping young people improve ability in social practices, finding jobs and starting their own business. ICBC has managed to develop the contest into a platform where college student can show talents, enhance practical capability, find jobs or start businesses, and realize social value. It is proved that by soliciting financial creative designs from college students and encouraging them to spread wealth management knowledge, participants may have an opportunity to apply theories to practices, improve innovative awareness and research ability, train innovative personnel geared to the social needs, facilitate the bank-university cooperation, and pool social forces with a view to promoting financial innovation and delivering high-quality financial services.

A contest organizer from ICBC said that the fifth contest held in cooperation with the UIBE was another positive attempt in fulfilling openness and innovation. In the future, ICBC will continue to enhance its cooperation in creative financial products with enterprises, universities and research institutes. With the joint efforts from all walks of life, the Bank will develop and optimize innovative financial products based on clients’ actual needs to provide users with impressive products.