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Bank helps clients manage idle funds
By Zhang Dingmin (China Daily)
Updated: 2004-04-10 08:47
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) launched an asset management centre on Friday to help its corporate clients manage their idle funds.
The centre is also a major step by China's largest commercial bank to boost income from intermediary services and reduce its reliance on conventional lending business.
"We aim to provide differentiated fund management services that combine safety, liquidity and profitability, and help our clients better manage funds that are sitting idle," said ICBC Vice-President Wang Lili.
Li Xiaopeng, assistant president of ICBC and president of ICBC's Beijing branch, said the establishment of the centre would facilitate the bank's efforts to improve competitiveness through greater financial innovation in its services.
The centre also launched its first product series on Friday, the ICBC Bond Trading Master, which provides the bank's clients with access to the interbank bond market, the most developed section of China's bond market.
Non-financial corporations are currently not allowed in the interbank bond market, but can mostly trade in the exchanges.
The interbank market boasts lower trading costs, a more diversified selection of contracts, as well as a safer custodian system compared to the exchanges market, said Xu Zhihong, head of the ICBC Treasury Department.
Xu said the Bond Trading Master is capable of providing clients with higher yield than bank deposits, without sacrificing safety, as most of traded bonds are issued by either the government or State-owned policy banks.
The clients' funds will be strictly kept away from the bank's own to prevent related risks, he said.
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