ICBC to accelerate Internet strategy

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd has accelerated the implementation of its Internet finance strategy as the bank makes great efforts to adapt to the changes in technologies and customer demands.

Jiang Jianqing, chairman of ICBC, said on Monday that the launch of the strategy to develop Internet finance is an inevitable choice for the largest State-owned commercial bank in China by assets.

"With the implementation of the national strategy to promote the development of Internet finance and the improvement of relevant policies and regulatory framework, Internet finance will become a major area of the Chinese economy, which has great potential for growth and is full of vitality," Jiang said.

ICBC will build a new model of financial services based on comprehensive application of big data. Characterized in online-to-offline interaction; the new model will emphasize on providing smart financial services, he said.

"The real challenge for ICBC does not come from our cross-sector competitors but lies in whether we can better adapt to the financial ecological environment in the age of the Internet and the changes in customer demands, with an innovative and enterprising mind to embrace new trends in technological changes," he said.

The bank has established three platforms covering e-commerce, instant messaging and direct banking. It has also developed three product lines in e-payment, online financing as well as investment and wealth management.

The bank's e-payment service has more than 50 million accounts with transactions worth 65 billion yuan ($10.4 billion) after a year's development, said Yi Huiman, president of ICBC.

Transactions on the bank's business-to-customer e-commerce platform has exceeded 100 billion yuan, making it one of the top 10 domestic e-commerce platforms, with 16 million registered users after it opened for business 14 months ago.

Yu Liang, president of China Vanke Co Ltd, one of the country's largest real estate developers by market value, said his company's transactions on ICBC's e-commerce platform reached 120 million yuan within just a month's trial.

"In 2015, we will explore a closer model of business cooperation with the platform and provide integrated services during the whole process of online home buying, online payment and online finance. We hope that our sales will exceed 10 billion yuan on this platform this year and look forward to exploring a new model of e-commerce for real estate developers with the help of ICBC," Yu said.