OREANDA-NEWS. April 03, 2013. Bank of China Limited (“BOC”: Hong Kong Stock Exchange stock code: 3988; Shanghai Stock Exchange Stock code: 601988) announced its 2012 annual results. According to International Financial Reporting Standard (“IFRS”), BOC recorded a profit after tax of RMB145.52 billion,a year-on-year growth of 11.51%.

This represents an increase of 14.57% after eliminating the one-off impact of BOCHK’s Lehman Brothers related products etc. in 2011.

The year 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bank of China. The Bank inherited and carried forward its fine tradition, adhered to focusing on profitability and emphasizing streamlining structure and managing risks, enhanced infrastructure construction. Despite the challenges arising from complex operating environment, the Bank successfully achieved solid results in 2012.

Continuous improvement in key financial indicators
As at the end of 2012, the Bank’s total assets, liabilities and capital and reserves attributable to equity holders amounted to RMB12.68 trillion,RMB11.82 trillion and RMB824.677 billion, increased 7.19%,6.74% and 13.92% respectively from the prior year-end. Profit after tax and profit attributable to equity holders of the Bank reached RMB145.522 billion and RMB139.432 billion, a year-on-year increase of 11.51% and 12.20% respectively. Return on average total assets and return on average equity stood at 1.19% and 18.10% respectively. The net interest margin expanded 3 basis points to 2.15%.

Non-interest income increased by 8.96% and accounted for 29.83% of the Bank’s operating income, remaining the highest among domestic peers. The cost to income ratio witnessed a year-on-year decrease of 0.77 percentage point to 31.81%. The non-performing loan ratio was 0.95%, down 0.05 percentage point from the prior year-end. The coverage ratio of allowance for loan impairment losses to non-performing loans was 236.30%, an increase of 15.55 percentage points from the prior year-end. The Bank’s capital adequacy ratio and core capital adequacy ratio stood at 13.63% and 10.54%, increased by 0.65 and 0.46 percentage point respectively from the prior year-end. Basic earnings per share recorded RMB0.05. The Board of Directors has recommended a final dividend of RMB0.175 per share for the year of 2012.

In 2012, the Bank has been listed in the Fortune Global 500 for 24 consecutive years with ranking upgrade by 39 positions. The Bank was awarded “Bank of the Year, China” by The Banker for the 3rd time and became the only bank from an emerging economy being enrolled as G-SIFI for two consecutive years.

Effective structure optimization
The Bank pushed forward liability structure optimization,improved its liability management approach and enhanced daily-average deposits management to increase stability of the deposits, and control the funding cost by vigorously developing low cost funding resources. As at the end of 2012, the customer deposits increased by 4.04% to RMB9,173.995 billion while domestic customer deposits amounted to RMB7,515.165 billion,up 1.10%,which represent an increase of 6.99% excluding the structured deposits. Proportion of domestic structured deposits to domestic customer deposits decreased by 5.4 percentage points while proportion of the demand deposits to total customer deposits increased by 1.2 percentage points. Average costs of both domestic RMB and FX deposits dropped by 11 basis points respectively compared with the first half of 2012.

The Bank vigorously optimized asset structure to improve the asset yield. It prioritized its support to national economically important industries, strategic emerging industries, green industries, small and medium enterprises and personal customers, and achieved stable and balanced loan growth. As at the end of 2012, the total loans and advances to customers amounted to RMB6,864.696 billion, increased by 8.23% compared with the prior year-end. RMB-denominated loans was RMB5,246.944 billion, an increase of 9.87% from the prior year-end. Small-sized enterprise loans by “BOC Credit Factory” grew 37.67%, 31.28 percentage points higher than the growth rate of domestic RMB corporate loans. The domestic RMB personal loans accounted for 31.90% of the domestic RMB loans, up 1.90 percentage points compared with the prior year-end.

The Bank took advantage of market opportunities to adjust the structure of its investment securities portfolio, moderately increased the size of investment in domestic RMB-denominated bonds and expanded the proportion of its government bonds and debenture bonds. As at the end of 2012, the Bank held investment securities of RMB2,210.524 billion, an increase of 10.48% from the prior year-end. The average yield of domestic RMB investment debt securities and group’s investment debt securities increased by 32 and 13 basis points respectively compared with the prior year.

The Bank strengthened the integrated and balanced management of its asset and liability, overcame the impact of interest rate cut from domestic and overseas markets and acceleration of interest rate liberalization. Net interest margin of the domestic RMB business expanded and that of the domestic FX business rebounded. As a result, the net interest margin increased 3 basis points to 2.15% while domestic RMB net interest margin increased by 6 basis points to 2.39%.

The Bank’s fee-based business keep growing with further optimized structure. The non-interest income and net fee and commission income recorded an increase of 8.96% and 8.14% respectively. The proportion of income from capital-lite fee-based businesses accounted for 77.7% of the total fee income, up 5.92 percentage points compared with the prior year. The bank card fees, agency commissions and custodian fees recorded fast growth of 39.13%, 16.74% and 31.07% year-on-year respectively. Its international settlement and trade finance businesses led peers with settlement and clearing fees up 13.42% compared with the prior year.

Strengthened advantages of international and diversified operation
Seizing opportunities arising from China’s “Going Global” strategy and the rapid progress of cross-border RMB business, the Bank accelerated the construction of its integrated global service system and focused on improving its global service, management and support capacities to promote overseas business development. As at the end of 2012, total overseas assets was USD498.858 billion, an increase of 13.33% from the prior year-end, accounting for 23.52% of total assets.

Overseas profit before tax was USD5.528 billion, an increase of 11.66% year-on-year, accounting for 18.62% of the total profit before tax. Overseas customer deposits and loans increased by 22.34% and 15.36% respectively to USD266.121 billion and USD205.782 billion compared with the prior year-end. The Bank stepped up overseas network expansion by establishing 15 new overseas institutions in 2012. Currently the Bank had a total of 613 overseas institutions, covering Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and 36 countries.

The Bank’s cross-border RMB business maintained leading market position. The total cross-border RMB settlement transaction volume of the year reached RMB2.49 trillion, up 42% year-on-year. The Bank opened nearly 900 RMB clearing accounts for its correspondent banks and branches of the Bank in over 80 countries and regions across 5 continents. Its customers located in 200 countries and regions with No. 1 market share in cross-border settlement volume and the number of clearing accounts opened.After its Taipei Branch received approval to serve as the RMB business clearing bank in Taiwan, the Bank has been designated exclusive RMB clearing bank in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Malaysia. The Bank also became the main RMB clearing channel in Germany, France, Luxemburg, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines and South Africa, playing a major role in the establishment of London RMB offshore trading center. The Bank continuously enriched its overseas RMB products and services with bond underwriting and investment businesses developing rapidly and RMB cash wholesale business leading the peers, and became the world’s primary channel for offshore RMB cash supply.

The Bank fully leveraged advantages of its diversified business platform, and pushed forward customer development, business cooperation, cross-selling and product innovation to improve the group synergy.BOCI became the only Chinese financial institution to hold multiple clearing memberships from the world’s major commodity exchanges. BOCI China’s business volume and profit grew against prevailing market trends. BOCIM’s assets under management exceeded RMB100 billion. BOCG Insurance and BOCG Life led the market in general insurance and RMB insurance business in Hong Kong respectively. BOC Insurances’ profit rose significantly. BOCG Investment optimized investment portfolio. BOC Aviation is rated A- by Fitch Ratings and BBB by Standard & Poor’s, leading global peers.

Stable asset quality
The Bank closely monitored macroeconomic environment and earnestly conducted regular risk investigation, risk classification re-inspection, risk early warning and post-lending managementas well as intensified risk recognition and prevention, thus maintained a stable quality of credit assets.The Bankstrictly controlled the loan balanceto local government financing vehicles and strengthened risk control for real estate sector, sector with overcapacity and others.As at the end of 2012,the non-performing loans ratio stood at 0.95%, a decrease of 0.05 percentage point from the prior year-end. Special-mention loan ratio and overdue loan ratio remained stable. The Bank continued to implement a prudent provision policy with risk mitigation capability further enhanced. The allowance for loan impairment losses to non-performing loans was 236.30%, an increase of 15.55 percentage points from the prior year-end. Domestic institutions’ratio of allowance for loan impairment losses to total loans was 2.62%, an increase of6 basis points from the prior year-end.

Promoting infrastructure construction
In order to meet the development needs of the interactive and internet-connected era, the Bank actively promoted the smart-bank construction, striving to provide customers with financial services access anytime, anywhere, and any way to create the best customer experience. The Bank strengthened channel construction, and enhanced its intelligence level and service capabilities. Themiddle to large-sized fully functional outlets exceeded 1,800 andthe usage efficiency of self-service facilities were improved.The function of e-banking channelswas optimized as customer numbers of online banking, mobile banking and telephone banking grew 64%, 145% and 32% respectively and e-banking transaction volume increased 32.9% year-on-year. The Bank continuously optimized functions of core banking system and launched the integration and transformation for the overseas information system in a comprehensive manner. Italso carried outbusiness process integration and centralized operation for middle and back office to improve operational service capability.

In 2013,China will focus on improving the quality and effectiveness of its economic growth, further deepen its reform and opening up, continuously enhance its capacity for innovation and strengthen macro-control. It is expected that the economy will maintain rapid growth.The Bank will firmly seize this important strategic development opportunity and fully leverage the competitive advantages of its international, diversified and intellectual operation to accelerate the building of a premier multinational bank according to the guiding principles of striding forward through transformation and growing stronger through reforms.