ICBC has focused on providing financial services to small business segment beginning from 2010. Nowadays, conventional loan products cannot fully meet the diversified and individual financial needs of small business customers. In light of this situation, ICBC launches "Online Loan Link", an innovative service for customers to access loans via Internet Banking and has been highly regarded by many small enterprises. By the end of 2010, over 15,000 small business owners have received loans from ICBC "Online Loan Link". Loan balance moved forward by leaps and bounds and rose nearly 20-fold to almost RMB 90 billion. While gathering pace on the business, quality of ICBC "Online Loan Link" assets remained strong, non-performing ratio was a meager 0.08% at the end of 2010.

As related, "Online Loan Link" is a "tailored" VIP financing product especially designed by ICBC for all small enterprises. Small business customers only need to sign a revolving loan contract with ICBC one time. After that, companies can draw loans within contract's validity period whenever necessary, and repay anytime if there are idle funds. Credit line can be as high as RMB 30 million, loan can be used revolvingly within two years longest. "Online Loan Link" breaks the barrier of time and space since the application, withdrawal and repayment of loan can all be done online via Internet Banking. Loan amount is credited into account in real-time. Small business customers are able to apply at a time, draw loan in real time, repay anytime and use the credit line revolvingly, without running to the bank. This is a solution for small enterprises to obtain financing "in a short time, in a frequent and quick fashion". The product has gained favorable recognition from the small business customers since its launch.

Industry insiders also stated that conventional bank loans take longer time to process since there are a number of steps involved. Companies applying for loans must go through application, investigation, review, approval, contract signing and loan drawdown. Many companies prefer to borrow enough for the whole year to avoid going through all the complex formalities. However, businesses are signed one by one in actual practices. In this case, interests have to be paid for the loans during idle period. Compared against this, "Online Loan Link" can help companies solve the above problems easily. They can repay loans when there are idle funds or draw loans if it is necessary, depending on their peak/weak seasons or own situation, which means they can use their loans as they wish, increase the efficiency of fund usage and reduce the financial cost. Take the current benchmark interest rate of 1-year liquidity loan, if a loan of RMB 10 million can save 60 days of service period in a year, nearly RMB 100,000 of financial cost can be saved. To the bank, since the "Online Loan Link" is basically a self-service for customers to apply loans online via Internet Banking, this means a saving in labor and cost, and the improvement in asset income.

"Online Loan Link" is now a killer product for ICBC to expand small business loan market, said an executive with ICBC. This year, ICBC will leverage its technology leadership on online finance to move aggressively the "Online Loan Link" services. Meanwhile, ICBC will look for innovation, new business model based on the new financial needs of small enterprises, with special focus on the innovation of e-commerce products in order to better support the healthy growth of small businesses.