ICBC’s retail banking business, with a brand value of USD35.39 billion, dominated the “Brand Finance Banking 500 2020” recently published by the British magazine The Banker. In 2019, ICBC rose to the top of the list for the first time. This year, it extended its lead, marking new progress in retail banking business since the “No.1 Personal Bank” strategy got started.

The Banker’s retail banking brand value, appraised by Brand Finance, a well-known institution studying brand value, has been published for fourteen consecutive years and recognized as highly professional and authoritative valuation consultancy. As at the end of May 2020, financial assets of personal customers managed by ICBC exceeded RMB15 trillion, among which RMB savings deposits topped RMB10 trillion, personal wealth management products amounted to over RMB2 trillion, and sales of mutual funds and treasury bonds under agency arrangement, among others, led the market for years. The balance of personal loans approached RMB6 trillion. Relevant analysis suggested that ICBC’s strong customer base, superior service ability, state-of-the-art technology, and intensive risk control make it standing out in retail banking.

Customer base lays the foundation for the brand

Customers are the cornerstone of retail business. In recent years, ICBC has adhered to the strategy of “serving the broadest customer base” and made great efforts to develop inclusive finance, extending financial services to various kinds of customers who are unavailable to such services. On the one hand, ICBC has worked to expand and consolidate the customer base, with focus on key customer groups and market sectors. On the other hand, relying on such technologies as big data and artificial intelligence, ICBC has sought to meet diverse customer needs and discover potential customer value. At present, the bank’s full customer base amounted to 660 million customers in total.

Through years’ accumulation, ICBC has recorded hundreds of millions of customers in main business lines of personal banking. Specifically, it offered payroll service to 100 million personal customers, making payroll payment of over RMB4 trillion throughout the year. It extended social security card service to 150 million individual customers. It saw the number of credit cards issued passing the 100 million mark, the first of its kind in the domestic banking industry. The number of its personal mobile banking customers reached 370 million, ranking first among financial institutions. The strong personal customer base lays a solid foundation for ICBC’s leading brand value and market position.

Superior service graces the well-established brand

ICBC always puts customers and people first in service offering. It keeps close attention to market dynamics and customer needs, and forges superior service with craftsmanship spirit, in a bid to become a bank recognized by the most extensive customers. Since the COVID-19 outbreak this year, ICBC has launched a series of financial services in a timely manner, to assist in the pandemic prevention and control and secure public wellbeing. For example, ICBC established a green channel for charitable donation, and conducted free donation for over 270,000 times. It extended repayment of personal loans and credit cards, covering 1.74 million loan transactions. It came up with ten measures for emergency services to satisfy customers’ emergency needs related to the COVID-19 control. Personal paper certificates of deposit worth over RMB220 billion that would come due during the pandemic was automatically extended under the original interest rates, to guarantee customers’ benefits.

To provide “contactless services” for pandemic prevention and control, ICBC has sped up the innovation towards online, digital and intelligent service. It rolled out ICBC e-Wallet online payroll service, allowing enterprises and public institutions to open accounts and pay salaries online for their employees during work resumption. The payroll service has benefited nearly 100,000 employees in more than 1,000 enterprises, in which over 400,000 transactions on salary and subsidy payment were made. Meanwhile, ICBC launched the personal customer manager “Cloud studio”, through which financial services are provided online. Up to now, around 20,000 customer managers have opened the service, with total visits exceeding 2.5 million, through which customized online services are therefore greatly enhanced.

Science & technology empowers development

In 2019, ICBC released the intelligent banking ecosystem ECOS, which was designed to support its transformation and development in the new era with cutting-edge financial technologies. In retail banking, ICBC, adhering to the concept of “technology driven and innovation empowerment”, integrated intelligent technologies into various aspects of its businesses, to provide more targeted and customized service to customers.

On intelligent investment consultancy, ICBC launched the intelligent asset allocation service, utilizing big data analysis, quantitative investment models and other FinTech means to provide tailored product portfolios and comprehensive investment and wealth management allocation suggestions. It introduced the innovative product series “AI investment”, which registered an accumulated yield rate 15.21% higher than that of Shanghai Composite Index in the same period. With regard to intelligent service, ICBC developed and applied an array of analysis platforms, including customer portrait, fund monitoring and intelligent marketing, thus strengthening the support provided by big data. In terms of intelligent approval, ICBC introduced and continued to improve the intelligent decision-making engine for credit cards, proactively granted loans of nearly RMB350 billion to about 800,000 small and micro enterprises through “Quick Lending for Operation”. Regarding intelligent operations, ICBC offered one-stop services featuring online application and offline mailing for credit certification, debit card replacement without change of card number, thematic paper certificates of deposit, and breakdown printing.

Security and resilience set an example in the industry

ICBC has been maintaining a safe, resilient and standardized management style since its establishment, doing its utmost to secure customers’ assets.

In recent years, new types of telecommunication network fraud and crime have seriously disturbed the financial order and endangered the property security of the general public, thus calling for higher requirement for personal financial services.

ICBC, in response, developed and debuted the ICBC Intelligent Defender account security management service. Individual customers can use the service for free to manage account security in a comprehensive way. Specifically, customers can conduct an overall “security check” for their accounts and get corresponding solutions; they can use account security lock to enable or disable account transaction permission by location or time based on their transaction habits; they can also customize management of their ICBC bank card accounts based on their card use habits and security needs. Up to now, ICBC Intelligent Defender has been used by more than 30 million individual customers for over 100 million person-times.