ICBC provides real-time prices to worldwide buyers and sellers of precious metals including gold or silver in Beijing, London and New York round the clock, said in a recent announcement of the Bank. This marks ICBC as the only financial institution from China to quote precious metal prices at Reuters, a global financial information provider. ICBC also acts as the market maker to trade precious metals with 10+ overseas and domestic banks, a major breakthrough for a Chinese financial institution to quote prices and match deals for other banks buying and selling precious metals.

Industry insiders said ICBC is already a market maker in the international precious metal market by offering real-time quotes continuously to both buyers and sellers who are banks. A market maker, by definition, is an institution that quotes both a buy price and a sell price in a specific financial instrument market to maintain liquidity and trading. Market makers are usually firms with strong financial position and market influence since they play a crucial role to discover reasonable prices and maintain market stability.

In 2005, ICBC rolled out a new service for customers to buy/sell precious metals via account. Since then, growth has been impressive in terms of scale and products, backed by ICBC's cutting-edge technology, extensive network and innovation. Today, ICBC customers can buy/sell four types of precious metals (gold, silver, platinum and palladium) using accounts in USD or RMB, through spot deals, placing orders, buying fixed amounts at regular intervals, or two-way trading. Among all banks in China, ICBC offers the most complete range of precious metals for customers to trade via accounts with a wide variety of functions. ICBC has accumulated rich experience in serving the customers. Being a major player in the international market to quote prices and match deals for precious metal traders, ICBC not only achieves fast growth in providing services for customers to trade precious metals via account but also makes breakthrough on quoting precious metal prices in global market by a Chinese financial institution. By mid-November, 2012, ICBC acting as market maker concluded 151 spot deals for precious metal traders, involving a total of USD 382 million.

An ICBC executive said, the next move of the Bank is to fulfill its role as a market maker to provide better services by quoting prices and matching deals for banks and retails investors around the world to buy and sell precious metals.