COMMERCIAL BANKING’S DIGITAL FUTURE
Global Finance: ICBC is a digital banking trailblazer.
What is the genesis of your high-tech leadership?
Qian Bin: ICBC’s “smart bank” evolution had humble
beginnings. When ICBC was established in 1984, we
processed transactions manually using abacuses
and pens. Over the years, we made strategic tech
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to build a complete electronic banking system, with
online, mobile and telephone banking, corporate
banking, self-service terminals and ATMs. In 2015,
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life. In 2017, e-ICBC3.0 smart bank launched, with
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Our digital transformation was accelerated through
reconstruction of ICBC’s enterprise-level business
structure and Group-level IT system, and a new
integrated FinTech ecosystem.
Today, 98.1% of ICBC’s business is online—equal to
670,000 tellers or 60,000 branches—saving nearly
RMB200 billion annually. Our online platform has
over 500 million retail customers and 7.76 million
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than 1,000 services with the most partners among
our peers.
With the outbreak of COVID-19, ICBC immediately
launched initiatives promoting “zero-contact”
services so customers could do their banking online.
New mobile features included one-click large-sum
transfers, repayment of non-ICBC credit cards, and
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management products. We created a “Cloud Studio”
with 16,000 virtual account managers and built 24 new
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ICBC introduced free online networks for emergency
supplies management, health information registration,
and campus COVID-19 control registration used
by over 10,000 medical institutions, communities,
schools and other entities. To ensure continued
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launched “Chunrun Action”, providing digital credit,
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GF: Could you please talk about your understanding
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characteristics. First, all things are interconnected.
Banking service is everywhere with interconnectivity
of product, service, scenario and data. Second, data
is the basis. With data as an underlying asset and
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business processing, data-backed service and data-
generated value. The third is smart and non-inductive
service. The fourth is openness and integration. With
the platform as carrier, we can break boundaries
of service location, contents and mode, follow
customers’ moves of “going global” and “bringing
in”, and construct open, win-win scenarios and a
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GF: What suggestions will you give with respect to
future digital transformation and development of
commercial banking?
Qian: First, commercial banks should advance digital
transformation on higher footings. Second, there is no
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systems, endowments and local environments. Third,
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services to the real economy. Fourth, commercial
banks should make good use of FinTech to deliver
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forward with innovation in business mode, banks
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of risk control, enhance their capability of intelligently
coping with risks, construct capability models for
dealing with “Black Swans” of various kinds, and
enhance the ability to handle crisis in the digital
economy times.SPONSORED CONTENTQ
ian Bin, General Manager of Internet Finance
at ICBC, discusses commercial banking’s
digital transformation and its role in developing
the real economy and mitigating risk.