Being the first bank in the country to engage professional precious metal business beginning from 2009, ICBC has launched nearly a hundred precious metal products through aggressive innovation on the products and services tailored to the needs of the customers. ICBC is the commercial bank in the country offering a full portfolio of precious metal products encompassing physical metals, trading metals, precious metal financing and wealth management metals. ICBC has 1.66 million precious metal customers more than that of the beginning of 2010 to 2.4 million by the year-end. The 24,400 tonnes of precious metal traded in 2010, rising by nearly 25 times over 2009's, helped ICBC defend its dominance in precious metal market.

Market analysts considered that precious metal has two properties, a financial product as well as a commodity. To the banks, engaging in precious metal business has inborn advantages, meaning integrated, diversified products and services can be offered to customers. ICBC, being one of the earliest banks to engage precious metal business, leverages its strong technology, network expertise and professional staff to drive product and service innovation to better align with market demands. ICBC entered partnership with China National Gold Group Corporation and World Gold Council to establish its market dominance by offering full range of products and top services and build its "Golden Brand" in precious metal market.

In the offering of traditional physical precious metal products, ICBC "Ruyi" Brand represents a full range of Fortune God Gold Medal, Peony Ruyi Gold Bar, Luck-Prosperity-Longevity-Happiness Ruyi gold coins, special design, good price, low investment threshold, and designed with emphasis on Chinese folk culture and key themes. All the products are warmly welcomed by the customers. Meanwhile, ICBC also launched the repurchase service on gold bar offering good protection for customers to turn the investment into cash. In late 2009, ICBC made another first move to launch gold accrual service to fill the market gap. Gold accrual is a service similar to the regular investment in fund. Customers complete the formalities at the ICBC counter just once and start investing gold regularly and easily. More than 1 million customers have opened accounts in ICBC up to end of 2010.

In terms of trading services on precious metal, ICBC makes full use of its financial strength and technology expertise to launch a wide range of innovative services for customers to trade precious metals: account gold, account silver, deferred settlement of gold, deferred settlement of silver and brokerage of physical gold. ICBC remains first place in the league table of trading account gold for years. Initial investment on ICBC account gold is minimal. ICBC prices on account gold are quoted in real-time and go along with the international market price. Customers can invest anytime 24 hours a day either via ICBC Internet Banking, Telephone Banking or in person at ICBC outlets. In August 2010, ICBC was the first among the domestic peers to launch account silver products and traded more than 10,000 tonnes of silver as of end of the year. The introduction of margin trading and short-selling mechanism for deferred settlement of gold, deferred settlement of silver offers a chance for investors to make profit even in bearish market.

In 2010, ICBC also moved aggressively in the innovation for precious metal financing and wealth management services in a bid to offer a wider range of financial services for companies and personal customers. Gold leasing, credit facility using gold as pledge, inter-bank borrowing/lending of precious metals are new credit facility products offered to customers by ICBC through joining force with large gold group corporation, companies either producers or users of gold. In the offering of wealth management products, ICBC launched Ruyi gold composite wealth management product in June 2010.

ICBC was the first bank in China to set up Precious Metal Department in September 9, 2009 dedicated to the trading of precious metal. Since then, ICBC set up flagship stores in Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu, Shanxi in September 2010, another first in the industry to promote precious metal products by user experience. The flagship stores are equipped with low service counters. Depending on the different requirements of the customers, services, either "advices" or "experience" are offered, such as how to choose an appropriate precious metal product, how to appreciate the cultural meaning behind, how to seize the right opportunity to buy or sell, how to turn the precious metals easily into cash. All these are suggestions to help customers understand the product fast and pick the right products.