Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, ICBC has been focused on the needs of real economy related enterprises in direct financing, cross-market risk management and cross-border use of RMB, providing a variety of financial market services such as bond underwriting, risk mitigation services and agency trading. As at the end of the first half of this year, ICBC’s bond underwriting, bond investment, offshore RMB market making and other core financial market businesses have been ranked first among domestic banks for five consecutive years, providing strong financial support for the transformation and development of the real economy and the Belt and Road Initiative.

According to an official with ICBC, to support the structural reform of the supply side, ICBC has been following the trend of financial disintermediation and de-leveraging by conducting bond underwriting business for the key and weak fields of economy. ICBC has helped enterprises reduce financing costs by supporting them to issue various types of bonds in the inter-bank market. Statistics show that over the past five years, ICBC has acted as underwriter for bonds worth nearly RMB 4 trillion and invested around RMB 4 trillion in RMB bonds, making it the largest underwriter and investor in bonds among domestic banks.

Given the demand for cross-market capital operation and risk management from Chinese companies going global, ICBC supports corporate customers to conduct investment trading, risk management, capital operation and participate in global market competition and diversify asset allocation by building multiple markets across the globe, connecting RMB and foreign currencies, and providing multiple hedging tools such as interest rates, exchange rates and commodities. ICBC is the first domestic bank to launch the trading of 80 currencies for the Belt and Road and emerging markets. ICBC has built a leading independent pricing model in China that covers all major derivatives to drive internationalization of the RMB. Through these efforts, ICBC provides cross-currency, cross-market financial services support for enterprises to participate in the “Belt and Road”.

In promoting globalization of financial market services, ICBC builds and improves a global operation system, covering 13 product lines and multiple currencies for 24h centralized operation. ICBC is the first Chinese bank to set up a 24h market making platform for global offshore RMB foreign exchange and achieve multi-bank electronic platform for offshore RMB market making trading, with its market making volumes the largest among Chinese banks. ICBC has independently developed the Financial Market Business Management platform (FMBM), a groundbreaking platform in China, for integrated management of onshore and offshore financial market business, which has further enhanced the business operation and risk management capabilities.