More than 100,000 students from over 1,000 colleges have applied to participate in the Sixth “ICBC Cup” Financial Creative Design Contest of National College Students since it was launched in June this year. Application, mass election and preliminaries have been completed in the past five-plus months, and the financial creative design contest, one of the key parts of this year's “ICBC Cup”, has come to the stage of offline playoffs.

The offline playoff is an important section launched by ICBC this year to tap more creative talents from colleges. The playoffs will be carried out in five cities across the country, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Changchun, and the first playoff began at University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) on November 13, 2015. Applicants submitted their works on the official website of the contest, and excellent designs were selected through rigorous review to enter the offline playoff in each area. During the playoffs, the teams can choose how to present their works and should explain and demonstrate them and answer questions about them on site, which makes the contest more attractive and transparent. The top two teams from the offline playoffs will enter the finals on behalf of their city, and have the chance to go for the national championship and the cash reward of RMB 10,000. Furthermore, all candidates that enter the finals will directly receive offer from ICBC, while all students and teams entering the playoffs will have the opportunity to work at ICBC as interns on holidays and participate in interactive activities at ICBC outlets.

According to an ICBC official, cultivating innovative youths for the society is not only ICBC’s social responsibility as a world-leading financial enterprise, but also its obligation to practice and promote “mass entrepreneurship and innovation”. Since the “ICBC Cup” Financial Creative Design Contest of National College Students was initiated in 2010, it has discovered a large number of young and innovative financial talents and effectively boosted the innovation of financial services and the cultivation of innovative talents.