2024 marked a crucial year for fulfilling targets and tasks set out in the 14th Five-Year Plan as well as an important year of the new journey for ICBC after its 40th anniversary of the founding. We adhered to Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, earnestly studied and implemented the guiding principles from the third plenary session of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (“CPC” or the “Party”) and the Central Financial Work Conference. Following the principle of “guarding against risks, strengthening supervision, and promoting development”, ICBC made solid strides in giving greater play to the political and people-oriented nature of financial work, taking a holistic approach to deliver, and meeting difficulties head-on and striving for achievements in reform and transformation.
As a valuable bank, ICBC followed the general principle of pursuing progress while ensuring stability, and sustained efforts to grow bigger and stronger. Stability is of overall importance, and progress points to the direction. Over the year, we gained a deeper understanding of essentials and laws of finance, ensured both development and security, spared no effort to strike a dynamic balance between value creation, market position, risk control and capital constraint, and worked hard for a clean and healthy balance sheet as well as a balanced and sustainable income statement. The foundation for stability was fully consolidated. With such metrics as assets, capital, deposits and loans all maintaining rapid growth, ICBC remained the largest bank in the world. The superior quality was constantly improved. Net profit increased year on year, cost-to-income ratio remained superior, and both ROA and ROE stayed within an appropriate range. The resilience of strong development was further highlighted. NPL ratio was on a constant decline, while both allowance to NPLs and capital adequacy ratio steadily rose. The new momentum was accelerated. Such new types of infrastructure services as payment, settlement, clearing and custody achieved rapid growth, new business areas involving investment banking, wealth, asset management, and transactions grew in step with each other, businesses relating to emerging industries and future-oriented industries boomed, and new areas and tracks were diversified and upgraded on a continual basis. In addition to the interim dividend payout of about RMB51,109 million, ICBC anticipated the distribution of an additional final dividend of about RMB58,664 million. Calculated at average share prices around the year, our A-share and H-share dividend rates were 5.32% and 7.49%, respectively, contributing to stability amid market fluctuations.
As a leading bank, ICBC stayed committed to sticking to its major responsibilities and core businesses, and serving the real economy in a high-quality manner. As high-quality development must be pursued as a top priority in the new era, the financial sector cannot achieve high-quality development unless it can help advance high-quality development in social and economic spheres. Bearing in mind top priorities of the country, we worked tirelessly to help advance Chinese modernization, which is our greatest responsibility and largest opportunity, and were determined to act as the main force in serving the real economy, and become the ballast stone in maintaining financial stability, a bellwether in building strong financial institutions and a benchmark bank in fulfilling major responsibilities and core businesses. We took the initiative to implement existing policies to stabilize the economy as well as a raft of incremental policies, and saw an increase of 8.8% and 20.1%, respectively, in loans granted and bond investments, which helped support sustained economic recovery and growth. We put in place a work system for implementing the “Five Priorities” of technology finance, green finance, inclusive finance, pension finance and digital finance. Loans invested in the manufacturing industry, strategic emerging industries, and green development grew by 13.7%, 16.7% and 19.1%, respectively, all topping the ranking in the market. To promote high-standard opening-up, we saw a surge of 41% in cross-border RMB settlement, and spoke favorably of China’s economic prospect through such platforms as the BRICS Business Council, the China-Europe Business Council and the Belt and Road Bankers Roundtable. Furthermore, we prioritized defusing risks in real estate and other key areas, and instructed small and medium-sized financial institutions on technology of risk control. We strictly followed the principle of “active prevention, smart control and comprehensive management” to cement the three lines of defense. As a result, risks in “9+X” categories were broadly controlled, and the quality of assets saw steady improvements.
As a modernized bank, ICBC attached importance to upholding fundamental principles and breaking new ground, and stayed committed to advancing reform and transformation. ICBC was established in response to the national reform policy, has thrived in reform, and is bound to gain strength in reform. As we pushed ahead with the “five transformations” of intelligent risk control, modern layout, digital driver, diversified structure and ecological foundation, sustained progress was made in value creation, market competitiveness, market influence, and capacity for risk management and control. Intelligent risk control became more effective. We launched the main functions of the corporate intelligent risk control “4E” centers, worked to improve the working mechanisms of the Risk Management and Internal Control Committee, and risk officer, and continued to improve our enterprise risk management system. The modern layout was better-aligned. ICBC took the lead in establishing a headquarters for the Free Trade Zone program in Shanghai, was the first China’s banking institution to release the service program for financial infrastructure, and made an all-out effort to help develop new quality productive forces in line with local conditions. The digital driver was substantially enhanced. With focus on tackling core technological challenges, ICBC pushed ahead with the D-ICBC initiative. The number of monthly active mobile banking customers topped 260 million, and more than 200 independent application scenarios for a hundreds of billion-level AI model technology system were built. The diversified structure saw continuous improvements. The share of micro customers, the proportion of new “retail + inclusive” loans, and profit contribution degrees of overseas institutions and major domestic subsidiaries all increased over the previous year. The ecological foundation was further consolidated. With the implementation of “GBC+” projects, the number of personal customers and corporate customers climbed to more than 760 million and 13.00 million, respectively.
As a bank satisfactory to the people, ICBC stayed committed to serving the people with finance and further polished our brand image. Customers are the foundation of development, and financial work is aimed at meeting the people’s aspiration for a better life. We continued to upgrade and improve our service system, and handled with keen attention and care all matters, significant and minor, in an aim to consistently serve our customers and win their trust. We coordinated efforts to promote digital finance development and widen channels in rural areas, and took the lead in improving payment facilitation to make services more inclusive and widely available. With these efforts, inclusive loan customers surged 42% from the beginning of the year, agriculture-related loans increased by 22% compared with the beginning of the year, growth for customers at the county level outperformed the Bank’s average level, and newly-opened personal pension accounts soared 187%. Personal consumption loans and personal business loans increased by 28.3% and 24.6% as compared to the beginning of the year, respectively, to help boost domestic demand. We lowered interest rates on existing mortgage loans in a timely manner, benefiting 11.00 million households. Efforts were beefed up to promote the financial consumer protection, bringing about a steady improvement in customer satisfaction. Public-benefit programs were launched actively. The Bank set up 15 thousand “ICBC Sharing Stations” to deepen services benefiting the people, and continued to play the enabling role of finance in improving the people’s wellbeing.
As a clean bank, ICBC reinforced the Party building and took on a new look. ICBC is born with the red gene and continues to pass it down. We have adhered to the Party’s overall leadership, earnestly made rectifications following the disciplinary inspection by the CPC Central Committee, improved the long-term mechanism of “strengthening the soul through learning, enhancing wisdom through learning, rectifying conduct through learning and promoting action through learning”, firmly advocated “establishing Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole and establishing the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”, and faithfully “upheld Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole and upheld the Central Committee’s authority and its centralized, unified leadership”. We took solid steps to conduct Party discipline learning and education, and promoted full and strict governance over the Party and over the Bank in a deep-going way. We amended and improved the corporate governance system, adjusted departments and their management functions in the Head Office, rolled out the “subsidiary-specific policy” to enhance administration, optimized the internal control mechanism, worked to cultivate and carry forward financial culture with Chinese characteristics, and made corporate governance more effective.
At present, changes never seen in a century are evolving at a faster pace, and challenges stemming from uncertainties in the external environment are mounting. Against this backdrop, it is more necessary to view the Bank’s prospects in a comprehensive, dialectical and long-range manner. It is important to see the general trend. The long-term positive trend of the Chinese economy, an integral part of the global economy, has not changed and will not change. Despite grave and complicated situations last year, the Chinese economy sustains the momentum of recovery and growth, and shows enormous resilience. This is the biggest foundation and strongest support for the high-quality development of ICBC. It is important to capitalize on the momentum. While growth in China’s banking sector is experiencing short-term volatility from a global perspective, high-quality development is carrying forward energetically, driven by the integration of sci-tech innovation and industrial innovation. A steady rise in ICBC’s net profit last year is attributable to structural improvements in its traditional businesses, and solid strides in new types of business, in particular, innovative applications of FinTech, which created more and stronger new drivers of growth. It is important to bear in mind the tendency. In the context of China’s banking sector, development is an eternal topic, risk control underpins security, opportunities are analogous to key conditions, and marching forward courageously never falters. Over more than four decades, ICBC has withstood numerous challenges and tests to gain strength. No matter how situations will evolve and what difficulty will arise, we firmly believe that ICBC, a world-class and modern financial institution with Chinese characteristics, will cleave the waves and march forward steadfastly.
Let’s brave the wind and waves to strive hard for splendid prospects. 2025 marks the last year for implementing the 14th Five-Year Plan. ICBC will adhere to Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, and fully and faithfully apply the new development philosophy on all fronts. ICBC will embark on a new journey, as an industry leader, to pursue balancing and tackle challenges, adhere to the guidance of the Party building theory and push ahead with the “five transformations”, work hard for effective improvements in quality, reasonable growth in quantity, targeted risk prevention and control, and strict observance of rules and regulations, and stay committed to the path of financial development with Chinese characteristics, so as to contribute to a successful conclusion of the 14th Five-Year Plan and make unremitting efforts to build a strong financial country and advance Chinese modernization.
