ICBC made $347b in '13 cross-border business

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China announced on Wednesday its cross-border currency business garnered more than 2.1 trillion yuan ($347.04 billion) in 2013, an increase of 40 percent from the previous year.

The cross-border currency business has raked in nearly 5 trillion yuan since the bank launched the service in 2009.

By the end of 2013, ICBC had opened 485 cross-border settlement accounts over a network covering 72 countries and regions. The cross-border business is offered in all of its overseas branches allowed by local regulatory authorities to provide such a service.

ICBC launched cross-border currency products for individual customers in Beijing and Guangdong province in 2013. It completed two-way cross-border lending transactions for several Taiwan-funded companies in Kunshan, Jiangsu province.

The bank issued offshore yuan-denominated bonds worth 2 billion yuan in London in November 2013. That month, its Singapore branch also launched a bond worth 2 billion yuan, which is the first yuan-denominated bond issued by a Chinese bank in Singapore.

The People's Bank of China appointed the ICBC Ltd Singapore branch as the clearing bank for the business in Singapore on Feb 8, 2013. By the end of that year, the Singapore branch had opened clearing accounts for 67 commercial banks and completed more than 38,000 clearing operations totaling 2.6 trillion yuan.

The central banks of some neighboring countries of Singapore opened renminbi accounts at the ICBC Singapore branch and exchanged US dollars into renminbi.