OREANDA-NEWS. August 23, 2011. Since January this year, ICBC Bill Department gathers pace in bolstering business portfolio and product innovation, and maintains good momentum leveraging its dedicated and professional service system and domain expertise. Turnover of over RMB 240 billion up to end of June represented a profit of RMB 602 million and a growth of 13.37% over the same period last year. Profit contribution per person in average broke through RMB 2.3 million. The Department continues to keep zero percentage in the rate of accepting fraudulent bills, bad asset rate, fund loss rate and economic crime rate, reported the press-centre of ICBC.

Amid the changes in market conditions during the first half of the year, ICBC Bill Department has timely taken a strategic change of business direction on account of its advantages in settlement network, capital strength, customer resource and management expertise. The focus is to push ahead the R&D and innovation on new products and streamline the line of business. Examples are the new service of representing customers to raise fund online and the "Bill Winner". The Department also achieves breakthrough in moving forward emerging businesses such as electronic bill, low-risk bill acceptance, registering a turnover of over RMB 27 billion in electronic bill transactions just between January and June of this year, a jump of more than 300% over the same period last year.

In terms of streamlining the line of business, ICBC Bill Department concentrates on new profitability growth points by moving aggressively on bill discounting and the buying back of bill for sale in order to build a capital-saving business development model. To "drive profit through buying/selling" instead of "earn interest by bills on hand" by means of larger volume operation and faster bill circulation, the Department is shifting from "scale efficiency" to "volume efficiency". Bill approval, bill safekeeping, bill collection are some of the intermediary businesses that ICBC Bill Department promoted by dint of its intensive operation. During the first six months of this year, the Department realized a diversified income portfolio by posting a growth of more than 4 times against previous year in revenue from intermediary business, to RMB 9,257,300.

Meanwhile, ICBC Bill Department also takes various approaches to strengthen risk management with an emphasis to improve efficiency through risk control. Comprehensive risk management framework and internal control scheme provide assurance to the compliance monitoring and management of business, especially in the whole process of new business. The way of "involve first, keep track the progress, evaluate later" ensures targeted internal audit. Besides, operational risks are avoided via the computer system's "hard control" on transaction permission and credit limit. System information is used in full-process risk monitoring where risk warnings and suggestion are issued timely through computer system to effectively eliminate potential risks in business operation. By following ISO standards, ICBC Bill Department has improved its management on the processes and standardization.

ICBC Bill Department will continue to leverage its dedicated and professional services to loom large and beef up the brand of "ICBC bill" in the market, said an executive with the Department.