In May 2021, IB won a honorary title of “2020 Top Ten Social Responsible Institutions” in the 2021 China Financial Brand Summit and Financial Enterprise Social Responsibility Conference hosted by the China Banking and Insurance News, which is supervised by the China Banking Regulatory Commission.
Over the years, IB has been incorporating social responsibility into the core aspect of the Group’s development strategy with the vision of “A first-rate bank,a long flourishing IB”, took the lead in establishing the sustainable development concept of corporate governance, creatively put forward the CSR practice model of “integrating righteousness with profitability”, explored the win-win outcomes of the benefits and social effects, and created a CSR practice path with characteristics.
In 2020, IB stayed true to its original mission, gave play to its advantages of “Commercial Bank + Investment Bank”, made comprehensive use of the group resources and diversified financial instruments to fully support the “four major battles” against the epidemic, economic development, poverty alleviation and pollution prevention, and effectively served the stability on six key aspects and guarantee in six key areas. IB has been rated at A for two consecutive years in the MSCI ESG global rating with its excellent CSR performance, maintaining the highest rating of domestic banks, and won 15 CSR awards from the China Banking Association and Finance Asia.
Facing the Covid-19 epidemic, IB immediately made generous donations, both monetary and in-kind, to help Wuhan, and introduced a series of targeted measures extended to all parts of mainland China, such as tilt funding preference, fee reductions, and postponed loan repayment, to coordinate the epidemic prevention and control and financial services for economic and social development. By the end of 2020, IB has donated more than RMB 60 million for epidemic prevention and control, provided RMB 84.9 billion of credit to enterprises in the relevant industry, added a total of RMB 40.713 billion of credit to 1,242 small and medium-sized enterprises related to epidemic prevention and control, reduced or exempted customers the handling fees for more than RMB 3 billion, handled the phased deferred repayment of principal and interest for 9,440 small and micro enterprises at the amount of RMB 12 billion, and underwrote the debt of epidemic prevention and control for more than RMB 18 billion.
IB adheres to serve the real economy, continues to strengthen its support in this regard, implements the stability on six key aspects and guarantee in six key areas, deals with the problems in the key and weak areas of real economy, and accelerates the recovery of China’s economy. By the end of 2020, the balance of IB manufacturing loans was RMB 373.532 billion, of which the medium and long-term loans increased by 46.42% compared with the beginning of the year; there were more than 30,000 private enterprise customers and 119,000 small and micro enterprise customers in IB, with the loan balance of RMB 833.777 billion and RMB 805.455 billion respectively. IB has upgraded the “Financial Service Cloud” platform in Fujian Province, effectively solved the information asymmetry between banks and enterprises, and alleviated the problems such as difficult, expensive and slow-process financing for private and micro, small and medium enterprises through the “finance + technology + data + policy” integration. So far, the number of registered enterprises on the “Financial Service Cloud” platform exceeded 90,000, who released financial demands at a total amount of more than RMB 150 billion, and the accumulative number of transactions to address the financing needs exceeded 10,000 with the amount of nearly RMB 44 billion involved.
As the first EPFI and the leader in green finance in China, IB has been deeply practicing the “Two Mountains Theory” and actively contributing to the “peak carbon emission” and “carbon neutrality” goals through its vivid green finance practice. IB focuses on key areas such as utilization and protection of water resources, solid waste treatment, air pollution control, new energy, green transport and green buildings, and supports the green and low-carbon transformation of China’s economic society by means of “financing and intelligence” integration. Moreover, IB transforms the advantages of its professional capabilities in green finance into products and services that facilitate green financing by innovatively launching green financing products and services such as the “environmental protection loan” “water saving loan” “bank draft for green enterprises” “green loan for innovative investment”. In addition, IB has issued the first ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) financial product, underwrote the first “green bond for epidemic prevention” in the domestic market, issued offshore blue bonds in Hong Kong and underwrote the first corporate blue bonds in mainland China.
By the end of 2020, IB’s financing balance of green finance was RMB 1,155.76 billion, and it has served 29,829 green finance clients. By exploring green development models for financial support to poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, IB has exerted the “green+” effect and pumped 12.69 billion yuan into the programs. On April 24, 2021, the Bank also signed a commitment letter, taking the lead in China’s banking industry to adopt the “CLIMATE NEUTRAL NOW” initiative (hereinafter referred to as the “Initiative”) of UNFCCC, orderly carried out its own carbon emission reduction work, and established its carbon neutrality goal and roadmap in accordance with the international initiative system.
Along with the business growth, IB has continuously expanded the “integrating righteousness with profitability” model to the fields of inclusive finance such as the Bank-Bank cooperation, ageing finance, finance services for small and micro enterprises, and the finance related to the agriculture, countryside and farmers, and has provided a good example for the banking industry to explore and form a commercially sustainable ESG model. At the end of 2020, the IB Board of Directors formulated a new five-year plan, further establishing ESG quality development as a guiding principle for future development. IB strives to become a leader in the ESG development of banking industry and promotes the development of its environmental (E) finance business actively while emphasizing the enhancement of its social (S) and governance (G) capabilities and levels, and forming a new pattern of balanced development of the three pillars.
In 2020, the final year of poverty alleviation in China, IB insisted on the measures of both support and self-capacity development, developed the “five poverty alleviation systems”, i.e., industrial poverty alleviation, multi-channel poverty alleviation, product poverty alleviation, targeted poverty alleviation and education poverty alleviation in a coordinated manner, and explored to form a sustainable financial poverty alleviation model with its own characteristics and proven effectiveness so as to promote effective connection between poverty alleviation and rural revitalization continuously. IB has helped poverty-stricken areas to overcome poverty by combining the allocation of funds with the dispatch of officials, combining the construction of infrastructure and livelihood projects with the support of industrial development, and combining work-linked assistance with voluntary staff participation. The IB head office has coordinated the work to provide regular help in certain areas linked to each branch such as the deeply impoverished areas and concentrated contiguous poverty-stricken areas, and dispatched 40 poverty-alleviation officials to the 51 linked sites. And all of the areas have shaked off the poverty situation by April 2020. By the end of 2020, IB’s balance of targeted poverty alleviation financial loans reached RMB 16.668 billion, and the balance of loans related to the agriculture, countryside and farmers was 443.899 billion yuan, with an increase of 13.79% compared with the beginning of the year, which stimulated the capacity-building of poverty alleviation in poor areas.