OREANDA-NEWS. January 26, 2015. In recent years, by focusing on the increasing pension demand in China, ICBC has continued to strengthen financial service innovation in the pension sector to provide premium financial services in retirement planning. By the end of 2014, ICBC managed over 13 million individual pension accounts, with around RMB 70 billion pension funds under trusteeship, and over RMB 340 billion pension funds under custody, with the scale of all the three businesses leading its banking peers.

With the acceleration of aging society in China, the demand of government bodies, businesses and public organizations for pension services has seen rapid growth. As one of the first commercial banks offering the pension service, by leveraging comprehensive operational advantages of the Group, ICBC, has provided one-stop all-in pension services to 44,000 organizations and their employees with a full-suite license for the corporate annuity management business in the capacity of trustee, account manager, custodian and investment manager.

In providing the pension management service, the Bank has paid special attention to the needs of different organizations and individuals, and developed customized products and services through innovation. In addition to conventional businesses such as pension trusteeship, account management, fund custody and management consulting, the Bank has successfully expanded its service to cover investment & wealth management, and agency service, among others. For instance, to meet the demand of enterprises and public organizations for managing employee benefits and compensation plans, ICBC has launched the "Ruyi Life" welfare program product, combining information management of employee benefit schemes with wealth management. The product features simple operational procedures, safe and transparent operations as well as stable investment returns, meeting the needs for managing welfare funds and preserving and enhancing the value of the funds in employee accounts.

In addition, regarding the difficulties of SMEs such as small capital scale, lack of professionals, and high cost of establishing annuity schemes, the Bank has exclusively developed the "Ruyi Pension" Enterprise Annuity Union Plan, which features standard operational procedures and management model and diversified investment portfolios, and has addressed the difficulty of SMEs in establishing annuity schemes. In doing so, the Bank has enabled a large number of SMEs and their employees to enjoy the annuity management service as in big enterprises. Up to now, ICBC has entered into management agreements with 5,669 SMEs for the "Ruyi Pension" Enterprise Annuity Union Plan with managed funds of RMB 3.5 billion under trusteeship.