OREANDA-NEWS. October 15, 2014. In recent years, by adhering to the customer-centered principle, ICBC has actively advanced process optimization and service innovation in its basic financial services to allow for more conveniency.

According to statistics, 80% of its counter-based personal banking services can be provided by customer signature or with exemption from form filling by customers. The formalities and business handling time for opening a corporate settlement account have been cut by 75% as compared with those before such optimization.

Personal banking business involves lots of form filling, signing, and repetition of contents; while the opening of corporate accounts has been plagued with various agreements, seals, and round trips, all of which have long been difficulties in the banking sector. Especially given the extensive application of e-banking, most customers have got used to reading agreements online, and directly signing relevant service agreements offline, which has raised higher requirements for service convenience. To this end, by leveraging its technological strength and integrating various products and services through information sharing, ICBC has turned previously manual form-filling to signature, which has significantly simplified the business process, effectively addressed the paperwork difficulties, and notably enhanced its service quality and customer experience.

In terms of personal banking, except for high-risk business and those required by regulators such as remittance and agency business, signature-based service or exemption from form filling has already been realized, representing around 80% of all counter-based personal banking services, and covering around 100 services, including deposit and withdrawal, opening/closing of personal accounts, card replacement, and modification of passwords. When handling such business at ICBC outlets, customers almost need not fill in business vouchers manually, but tell the tellers what business they want to handle, check the handling result and sign their names.

In terms of opening corporate accounts, ICBC has reduced the formalities and time required by significantly simplifying the business process. Customers only need to inform their demands verbally and submit necessary account opening materials; other information will be entered by the tellers. On top of this, the Bank has implemented consolidated output of customers' information and simplified over 10 applications that previously should be filled in manually and various individual agreements that should be signed by customers into 2 application forms and 1 comprehensive agreement that need to be signed by customers for confirmation. Meanwhile, seal stamping has been reduced to 6 times and round trips to outlets to 2 times, with handling time shortened to 3 working days for account opening. The handling time for 7 basic services has been reduced to 24 minutes, including corporate internet banking, "ICBC Cash Management" cards, payment passwords and bank-enterprise reconciliation service.

In addition, via the no-form-filling service model, the Bank has enhanced communication and interaction with customers, and lowered the error rate in checking certificates and handling business. By widely applying electronic agreements, it has also reduced the use of paper vouchers and contributed to environmental protection.