On July 3, 2018, the China Banking Association held the Press Release of the Standards for Barrier-free Environment Construction of Banks and the 2017 China Banking Social Responsibility Report in Xiong’an of Hebei Province, IB won three honors, namely, the “Best Social Responsibility Manager Award of the Year”, “Best Green Finance Award of the Year” and “Best Social Responsibility Special Contribution Network Award of the Year”. So far, it has won the Social Responsibility Award issued by the China Banking Association for eight consecutive years.
Adhering to the original and providing multiple services for the real economy
Behind the honor of winning the Social Responsibility Award, IB has been adhering to the initial intention of “exploring ways for financial reform and making more contributions to economic development”, focusing on the origin, and giving full play to the advantages of modern integrated financial service groups, who has accurately and efficiently served major national strategies such as the “Belt and Road Initiative” and coordinated development of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Yangtze River Economic Belt, vigorously promoted the supply-side finance, and fully supported the development of real economy.
In 2017, through the three-in-one cross-border financial service system of its Hong Kong Branch, Free Trade Zone Branch and domestic branches, IB has closely followed the cross-border financial needs of enterprises to “go global”, and provided nearly 10,000 enterprises with coordinated-process of financial services, integrating the “local and foreign currencies, off-shore and on-shore currencies”, helping to build the “Belt and Road Initiative” financial artery. During the same period, IB won local government bonds for a total of RMB 125.61 billion to serve local economic development. By the end of 2017, IB’s the financing balance for IB’s corporate customers in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei reached RMB 375.4 billion, of which the on-balance-sheet loans (including bill discounting) were RMB 144.1 billion, with an increase of RMB 18.6 billion and 14.80% compared with the beginning of the year. In addition, the “Fujian Enterprise Technological Transformation Investment Fund” initiated by IB has effectively supported 70 key provincial technological transformation projects, and the total investment of contracted technological transformation projects has exceeded RMB 60 billion.
Integrating the financing with the intelligence and working together to develop green mountains and green waters
In recent years, IB has continuously cultivated green finance by making full use of diversified financial products to create a whole product chain of green finance and providing diversified “financing” and “intelligence” integration services, and become a “think tank” for the formulation of national green finance policies and the planning and construction of reform and innovation pilot zones, promoting the formation of green synergy among local governments, enterprises, the public and banks in China.
Since June 2017, IB has actively participated in the drafting and formulation of green finance reform and innovation plans in five provinces and regions in China from three aspects namely, the integration of “intelligence, financing and cooperation”, and has taken the lead in signing Green Finance Strategic Cooperation Agreements with the governments of pilot areas in such provinces (cities directly under the Central Government or autonomous region) as Zhejiang Province, Guizhou Province, Jiangxi Province and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, as well as with the stakeholders at the provincial level in such provinces (cities directly under the Central Government or autonomous region) as Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Gansu Province and Qinghai Province, offering financial support and suggestions for the development of local green finance, providing diversified financial services for the green finance reform and innovation pilot zones and promoting in-depth construction of local green finance system pilots. By the end of June 2018, IB had accumulatively invested more than RMB 260 billion in green financing in the five pilot provinces (regions), and provided green financing services at the amount of nearly RMB 80 billion since the establishment of the pilot areas last year.
At the same time, IB has also signed Green Finance Inter-bank Cooperation Agreements with such financial institutions as the Bank of Jiujiang, Anji Rural Commercial Bank and Bank of Huzhou, striving to create an “inter-bank cooperation sample” in the pilot areas. In addition, IB also joined hands with the Fujian Provincial River Chief System Office to promote the “Governance of the River Head” practice and jointly maintained “clean water and green shore” in key fields such as water resources protection, water pollution prevention and water ecological restoration.
By end of June 2018, IB has provided 15,742 enterprises with the financing of green finance foe RMB 1,574.8 billion, and the projects supported could save the consumption of 29.51 million tons of standard coal and 408.9084 million tons of water, reduce emissions of 83.9062 million tons of carbon dioxide, 3.8913 million tons of chemical oxygen demand (COD), 145,100 tons of ammonia nitrogen, 827,400 tons of sulfur dioxide and 66,100 tons of nitrogen oxides, and treat 45.0654 million tons of solid waste in China per year. IB judged the applicability of the Equator Principles in a total of 1,036 projects, of which 364 applied the Equator Principles, and the total investment of the projects involved reached RMB 1,506.046 billion.
In early 2018, shortly before the 10th anniversary of adopting the Equator Principles, IB released one of the research results on the topic of “Equator Principles and Sustainable Development of Banks”, a monograph Green to Gold: Empirical Study of Sustainable Banking Based on the Equator Principles which further systematized the theoretical and empirical research results of sustainable development and provided an “IB sample” for exploring the path of sustainable development in China.
Inclusive Financing, making banks more user-friendly
In terms of inclusive finance, the practice of IB is quite distinctive. It took the lead in establishing an Inclusive Finance Division among Chinese joint-stock banks and continuously improved the differentiated and featured inclusive financial service system, with unique inclusive financial business model, such as the Bank-Bank Platform and pension finance, making the featured services such as the finance for small and micro enterprises and community banking more popular to the public, further improving the five targeted poverty alleviation systems, i.e., “product poverty alleviation, industry poverty alleviation, channel poverty alleviation, education poverty alleviation, and poverty alleviation with fixed points” and allocating more financial resources to key fields and weak links in economic and social development so as to better meet the diversified financial demands of the public and the real economy.
As an important entry point for promoting inclusive finance, IB has been strengthening the loans to small and micro enterprises. By the end of 2017, its balance of “three no less than” loans for small and micro enterprises reached RMB 611.1 billion, with an increase of RMB 52.8 billion compared with the beginning of the year, ranking second among Chinese joint-stock banks, with a plan completion rate of 132%, the number of 56,000 loan households, and a loan acquisition rate of 96%.
In assisting small and medium-sized financial institutions to improve their services, IB’s Bank-Bank Platform took the comprehensive financial services of small and medium-sized banks as the center and realized resource sharing and mutual benefit among small and medium-sized financial institutions, especially with rural financial institutions such as rural commercial banks, rural credit cooperatives, and village banks through deeply integrating and innovating finance and technology, so that modern financial services such as mobile payment and wealth management can be extended to more third- and fourth-tier cities, rural areas and remote areas, which has filled the blind spots in financial services. By the end of 2017, there were 1,324 cooperative legal entities on the Bank-Bank Platform, and the annual payment and settlement transaction volume had exceeded RMB 4 trillion, of which 346 small and medium-sized financial institutions were provided with information system construction and custody operation and maintenance services, and more than 300 rural financial institutions were connected to the modern payment system.
Pension finance is an important starting point for IB to practice inclusive finance in response to the needs of an aging society. It has actively carried out the professional operation of pension finance, and constantly innovated and improved financial services for the elderly, such as product formulation, health management, legal counselling and property security, which had been highly recognized by the relevant Chinese authorities such as the National Office for the Aging and the People’s Bank of China. By the end of 2017, IB had served more than 13 million elderly customers.
IB’s community bank has extended its banking services to the “last mile” and become a bank outlet “within reach” of the public. By the end of December 2017, IB had opened nearly 1,000 community banks, with a total of 3.5 million community resident customers, and provided ultra-long extended hour services. IB’s balance of comprehensive financial assets was RMB 208.4 billion, of which the average daily balances of savings deposits and personal loans were RMB 39.5 billion and RMB 71.9 billion respectively, and the number of core retail customers was 830,000.
At the same time, IB actively participated in community public service activities and formed a three-in-one public interest and charity mechanism, i.e., “donation for education” “disaster relief” and “poverty alleviation”. In the past three years, IB has donated more than RMB 100 million to the society, of which its external donation was about RMB 21 million in 2017. In terms of targeted poverty alleviation, IB has effectively implemented the requirements of increasing financial poverty alleviation put forward in the Decision of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Winning the Fight against Poverty, focused on the poverty alleviation in the concentrated contiguous special hardship areas of provinces (cities directly under the Central Government or autonomous regions) such as Southern Xinjiang, Western Yunnan border mountainous areas, Wumeng mountainous areas, Yunnan-Guangxi-Guizhou stone desertification areas, Dabie mountainous areas and other key poverty-stricken areas in Fujian Province, and provided human and material support in the form of donations and support and help in the fixed points of location. IB has more than 80 poverty alleviation projects and sent 22 officials to station in villages, spending nearly RMB 13 million on poverty alleviation in 2017. In addition, it continued to support the reasonable credit needs of the population in poverty with registered files and cards. By the end of 2017, the balance of personal loans issued to the persons in poverty with registered files and cards totaled RMB 3,251 billion, within an increase rate of 31.14%.