As the most internationalized and diversified commercial bank in China, Bank of China has always been focusing on the domestic market and pursuing cross-border operations on the way of international development since its establishment. Particularly since its joint stock restructuring and listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2006, the bank has achieved specialized operation, intensive management and the integrated development of domestic and overseas business by actively adopting the Scientific Outlook on Development, striving to transform the development model and profit model, and promoting innovation, transformation and cross-border business. With important achievements in the overseas business, the bank has won many awards, including Best Globalization Bank in Asia, Best Foreign Exchange Bank, and Best Branch Banking Award in Asia Pacific, greatly improving its brand image and influence.
Yearly Growth in Operations with Continuous Scale-up in Overall Business
Since the joint stock restructuring, by leveraging the group's resources and competitive advantages, the bank has been seeking development potentials and new profit engines for its overseas business through product innovation and high-quality service on the basis of the demands of the market and customers. With its customer base gradually expanded, the assets quality continuously improved, the business sustainability further secured, and the overall business scale and performance significantly enhanced, the bank has entered a best era for the development of overseas business.
By the end of 2010, the bank had a total of RMB 2.3283 trillion of overseas assets and RMB 23.9 billion of net profit generated from its overseas business, up 80% and 50% respectively from the end of 2006, making a great progress in its operations.
Improvement in Robust Global Service Network with Accelerated Expansion of Branches
Looking back at the past 100 years, the bank has been energetically seeking for the approach to the development of its overseas business. The development of overseas business is the traditional key feature of the bank, the aim of pursuance of the bank, and the inheritance of the bank's concept and culture. Following a branch set up in Hong Kong in 1917, Bank of China London Branch was established in 1929, which is the first overseas branch in Chinese banking industry. After that, by following the national and overseas investment strategies and focusing on the critical strategic regions and markets, and improving the coverage of its outlets and market shares, the bank has expanded its presence in major global financial centers as well as the important countries and regions where Chinese "going global" enterprises are intensively located, to serve the Chinese enterprises and large multinational groups in the overseas market. Now, the bank has got a worldwide service network.
By the end of 2010, the bank realized an international presence in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and other 31 countries; owned 711 business branches and 273 non-business branches; established correspondent relationships with over 1000 banks worldwide, expanding its global service network. Furthermore, by cooperating with its worldwide correspondent banks, the bank launched "Chinese Desk" in the regions where Bank of China branch is not available. Up to now, the service is available in Oman, Ghana, Peru and UAE, providing convenient financial services to Chinese "going global" enterprises, individuals and local enterprises.
Integrated Development of Domestic and Overseas Business with Innovation to Products and Services
Help to build the Asia-Pacific R&D center for personal financial products, encouraging product innovation by establishing a R&D platform. With a integrated R&D platform, the bank collects the customers' demands, and then develops and migrates competitive and attractive products in compliance with the local regulatory requirements, and finally enriches the overseas financial products and achieves development for the specific products.
Build a robust service network with diversified service modes. The bank continuously improves the efficiency and accessibility of its services with the global relationship manager system, global credit line and other means. Its service scope is significantly extended with a robust service network of the Head Office, overseas branches and foreign correspondent banks which are linked and supported to each other.
Facilitate Chinese enterprises to "go global" with the "customer-focused and market-oriented" target, and the linkage among branches and institutions at home and abroad. The bank fully supports Chinese "going global" enterprises to seek for global opportunities and provides a package of comprehensive services for their international development by sharing resources and cooperating among the branches at home and abroad, in the aspects of customer retention, marketing, information communication, risk management, and cross-selling enhancement between the corporate and personal business.
Leading Overseas RMB Business with Proactive Vision
By taking the historical opportunity of RMB internationalization and the trials of setting cross-border trade accounts in RMB, leveraging the group's resources and competitive edges, and strengthening the linkage among branches at home and abroad, the bank's business scale is enlarged, the products and services enriched, the clearing channels diversified, the customer base expanded, the system smoothly operated, and the overseas RMB business rapidly developed. As the sole clearing bank for RMB business in Hong Kong, Bank of China (Hong Kong) Limited has expanded its RMB business to ASEAN countries and other regions. It handled the first RMB settlement transaction and the first cross-border RMB trade finance transaction, and underwritten most RMB bonds issued in Hong Kong. Bank of China Manila Branch handled the first overseas RMB cash backflow transaction, and Bank of China Jakarta Branch issued the first overseas RMB loan.
With the trials of setting cross-border trade accounts in RMB launched in July 2009, Bank of China handled a total of business volume of over RMB 740 billion by the end of March, 2011. Its Macau Branch, Bangkok Branch and Bank of China (Brazil) S.A. respectively handled the first local RMB settlement transaction. Its branches at home and abroad have successfully handled RMB settlement transactions for the customers in over 70 countries and regions. The bank also sets up RMB clearing channels all over the world, keeping a leading position in the sector.
This year is the first year of the 12th Five-Year-Plan, and it is the crucial year for the bank to implement the development strategy and plans. By taking the advantage of the integrated development of domestic and overseas business, the bank seizes the opportunity and breaks through the bottleneck to accelerate the development of overseas business, and is ready to celebrate its 100th anniversary with another round of sound and fast development of the overseas business.
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