On September 29, 2015, ICBC officially released its strategy for upgrading and developing internet finance in Hefei, Anhui province, and announced the establishment of an internet finance architecture built on “three platforms and one center”, covering and integrating financial services, e-commerce and social networking, in a bid to enhance the quality and efficiency of the real economy with new business forms and ecologies created by a major bank.

The “three platforms” stated in the above strategy refer to the e-Buy platform covering B2C, B2B and B2G (group procurement); the “e-Connect” real-time communication platform between the Bank and enterprises/customers and within the Bank; and the ICBC Direct Banking Platform on which businesses, customers and platforms are fully open, and direct sales are realized for all online businesses. The three platforms carry the Bank’s internet finance business, and, as a key application portal, forms a new internet finance ecosphere serving hundreds of millions of customers through an open sharing mechanism. The “one center” refers to the online financing center formally established on September 29. As ICBC’s platform for standardized and internet-based credit operations, it will realize wholesale development of credit businesses, especially microfinance and personal banking, on the basis of controllable risk, and bring customers the experience of “gaining access to loans by pressing one button, regardless of regional or time differences”.

At the press conference, Chairman Jiang Jianqing said that internet finance is staging another round of strong growth, with further implementation of the government’s “Internet Plus” initiative and the policies on promoting the healthy development of internet finance. As the biggest commercial bank, ICBC has the responsibility, confidence and capability to play a leading role in this transformation, boost e-ICBC’s value creation capacity, service quality and level of inclusiveness, and contribute to enhancing the quality and efficiency of the economy under the new normal with its newfound advantages and growth drivers. In March 2015, the Bank released its internet finance brand -- e-ICBC, being the first among domestic commercial banks to do so, and made significant progress in internet finance innovations over half a year or so. The newly-gained insight into and breakthroughs with the development of internet finance have helped the Bank form a more clarified and complete development strategy for internet finance, which can be called e-ICBC V2.0 and described as: establishing an internet finance architecture built on “three platforms and one center”, covering and integrating financial services, e-commerce and social networking, in a bid to enhance the quality and efficiency of the real economy with new business forms and ecologies created by a major bank, and provide new engines for operational transformations.

Jiang Jianqing further pointed out, the “three platforms and one center” architecture has bestowed new meanings on the e-ICBC brand. “e” (Electronic) means information and internet-based development; I (Information) relates to the e-Connect platform, and its core lies in grasping the information flow of customers; C (Commerce) relates to the e-Buy platform, and its core lies in grasping the commodity flow of customers; B (Banking) relates to the ICBC Direct Banking Platform, and its core lies in grasping the capital flow of customers; C (Credit) relates to the online financing center. Such correlations are both coincidence of history and inevitability of development.

In the first nine months of the year, the transaction volume of ICBC’s e-Buy platform reportedly exceeded RMB500 billion, and the volume is expected to climb above RMB600 billion by the end of the year and exceed RMB 1 trillion next year. The adherence to commodity quality has made e-Buy highly popular among customers. “e-Connect” users have numbered 2 million by now. Going forward, the Bank, by further improving its functions, will form a safe and reliable social networking financial services platform with diversified information and timely interaction, and provide information communication and customer services via e-Connect to hundreds of millions of existing customers and new customers next year. The upgraded ICBC Direct Banking Platform will remove the walls of mobile banking and internet banking and realize direct sales of all online businesses by opening up businesses, customers and platforms, so that customers of the Bank and not of the Bank can all log onto the platform to access relevant services.Currently, ICBC has 165 million mobile banking customers, 200 million internet banking customers and posts a transaction volume of RMB 450 trillion, all topping its domestic peers. After the release of the upgraded ICBC Direct Banking Platform, the number of customers is expected to increase further notably. With total online financing amounting to around RMB450 billion, ICBC is now the biggest online financing bank in China. The founding of an online financing center is expected to bring more financing businesses online, and offer completely new internet-based experiences to customers. Meanwhile, on the basis of the three platforms and the new mechanism for internet finance marketing service, the Bank has realized rapid development of three product lines -- financing, payment, and investment & wealth management. Among them, “ICBC e Payment”, a small-amount and convenient payment product, has garnered about 67 million customers, with transaction volume exceeding RMB120 billion in the first nine months of the year; its processing capacity of tens of millions of concurrent transactions per second is unrivalled in the industry. In the area of investment & wealth management, “ICBC e Investment” is the only investment and trading platform for individual investors in the domestic banking industry, and its transaction volume has reached nearly RMB250 billion since the beginning of the year.

Yi Huiman, President of ICBC, introduced the operation model and product functions of the online financing center at the press conference. He said, by leveraging the advantages of big data and informatization, ICBC is working on reforming the credit business model, and breaking up the credit business into a specialized system and a standard one. For the financing need of major enterprises and projects, demand for complex and integrated financial services, and customized financial needs of some small and medium-sized enterprises, the Bank will rely on professional financing manager teams to provide relevant services, as they can control credit risks with their expertise. As for the credit business that features small credit lines, symmetrical information and is fit for standardization, the Bank will establish a risk control model based on the internet and big data, improve products and processes, and realize self-service operations online, automatic business handling and accurate risk control. Now the Bank has launched increasingly diverse products through innovation and development of credit business standardization, with the business scale expanding rapidly. For instance: “Easy Loan”, a consumer credit product accessible both online and offline, has 4.3 million customers now with the balance exceeding RMB200 billion, basically equivalent to the turnover of P2P online loans nationwide. The online revolving loan product, an internet-based loan product catering to the “short-term, frequent and urgent” financing needs of small and micro enterprises (“SMEs”), has RMB1.85-trillion loans granted to around 80,000 SMEs with a balance of nearly RMB230 billion. It is the biggest online financing product by amount in China. The “personal self-service pledge loan” is an online product launched recently with a total of RMB62 billion granted and the loan balance reaching RMB25.8 billion. In June this year, ICBC also set up a personal credit consumer finance center engaged in purely credit-based and fully online consumer credit business without pledges or guarantees, which supports the expansion of consumption and upgrading of the consumption structure, and has become a key component of the online financing center.

Also during the press conference, Chairman Jiang Jianqing elaborated on the Bank’s outlook on the development of internet finance, stressing that the nature of internet finance remains to be finance, instead of deviating from the basic functions or attributes of finance; what can be changed are the media, channels and means for its realization. For financial institutions to develop internet finance, they need to combine cutting-edge internet technologies with their financial expertise, and stay focused on their own job in the spirit of the internet -- “openness, equality, collaboration and sharing”. By integrating finance with the internet and through consistent innovation, ICBC has successfully made its own way of innovating in and developing internet finance, not only opening a new chapter on its development of internet finance, but also generating a new driving force for “Internet Plus” and the age of “mass entrepreneurship and innovation”.

First, the Bank has adhered to the principle of serving the real economy in developing internet finance. In promoting e-ICBC, the Bank has always actively turned its innovations and comparative advantages in internet technologies and cross-industry integrated applications into new models and means for serving the real economy, and made internet finance truly linked to various types of industrial and commercial businesses, benefiting millions of households and serving the national welfare and the people’s livelihood. Moreover, the Bank has particularly stepped up support for SMEs, “Sannong” (agriculture, farmers and rural areas) and other weaker parts of the real economy. It innovatively developed feature products by combining the inclusiveness of internet finance with its experience in credit business, such as “ICBC · Bring the Light” technology loans, rent loans for the Baigou bags & suitcases wholesale market in Hebei province and tea loans launched in Sichuan and Anhui provinces. This has helped enhance the availability of financing and lower financing costs for SMEs and agriculture-specific merchants, and facilitated mass entrepreneurship and innovation. In addition, ICBC has strengthened support of the expansion of consumption and upgrading of the consumption structure, set up sub-platforms on e-Buy (including travel channel, motor city and house purchasing center) and embedded online consumer credit service into such platforms, effectively turning potential consumption into real consumption, and consumer demand into consumer credit demand, and bringing into better play the supporting role of consumption in economic development. The Bank has also stepped up cultivation of new business forms and support of innovation in public service models. It developed tailor-made apps and financial services for hospitals, schools and other specific areas, and facilitated social services and business operations by building cloud platforms that serve government agencies and group customers, and connect the upstream and downstream of corporate supply chains, helping sectors of different types realize the upgrading and development of “Internet Plus”.

Second, the Bank has brought into full play the advantages of big data applications in developing internet finance. Back in 2007, it established two data platforms -- data warehouse and group information bank, realizing centralized management of all customer and account information. So far, the Bank has accumulated data on the default rates and loss given defaults about personal customers for nine years and about corporate customers for seven years. The high authenticity and accuracy of such data has also created huge value for the Bank in controlling material risks, boosting the efficiency of financing service and expanding the credit market. Furthermore, the Bank has built a team of over 2,000 data analysts and a group-level credit risk monitoring center, which, based on big data description and analysis, allows it to realize dynamic risk monitoring and real-time early warning control of over RMB10 trillion credit assets bank-wide and a total of RMB8-9 trillion loans granted each year, and enhance the effectiveness and predictability of risk control, on one hand; and to have a deeper understanding of customers, discover more business opportunities and provide more targeted financial services, on the other hand.

Third, ICBC has consistently valued the enhancement of customer experience in developing internet finance. Guided by its financial consumer-oriented business logic and service model, the Bank has established special R&D teams and operations center for internet finance, attempted to perceive and understand customers through various channels and methods including “e-Connect”, and endeavoured to provide customers with more high-quality, convenient, inexpensive and safe products and services through “small-but-fast-stride” iterative innovations, cross-industry innovations extending the service chain, and brainstorming fans-based innovations.

Fourth, ICBC has persistently built online + offline interconnected, integrated and mutually supportive service models. In the mobile internet age, financial consumers still have great trust in and reliance on real channels, and the requirements for personalized and differentiated service experiences, and face-to-face communication over complex financial products or high-risk businesses, which will exist for a long time. For this reason, the Bank has accelerated its move to intelligentize offline outlets, offered WiFi coverage at all its domestic outlets, exerted the unique advantages of physical channels in tutoring customers, expanding businesses and displaying services, and turned around 17,000 domestic outlets and its overseas institutions distributed in over 40 countries and regions around the world into major resources and service synergy for online businesses. Moreover, by absorbing the “platform thinking” and centering on each outlet, the Bank has been vigorously facilitating the building of “ICBC e-Life” store cluster covering food, clothing, housing, transportation and daily necessities. This is intended to establish a front-end interface for merchants and push relevant business information to consumers online, serve merchants offline through outlets, and build a “finance + business” ecosphere, showing the Bank’s commitment to being easily available in every business scenario where it is needed, and providing financial services seamlessly connected with daily life.