ICBC has recently completed all risk hedging transactions of special drawing rights (SDR) bonds issued by the World Bank, creating a new mode of comprehensive bond underwriting and risk hedging services in the Chinese banking sector and becoming the industrial leader in providing foreign exchange derivatives services to large international financial institutions including the World Bank. As the lead book-runner and the joint lead underwriter, ICBC has previously issued RMB 500 million SDR-denominated bonds of the World Bank and obtained all the shares of the foreign exchange settlement & sale and risk hedging transactions under the SDR bonds of the World Bank.

According to an official with ICBC, given the exchange rate risk and SDR basket currency share re-adjustment risk as the bond issuer, the World Bank needs risk hedging solutions to lock financing cost. By leveraging its comprehensive financial service capability as the largest bond underwriter and the largest financial market maker in China, ICBC proposed an integrated service solution of purchasing foreign exchange onshore and hedging overseas, and won all foreign exchange settlement & sale and risk hedging transactions of the World Bank after several rounds of bidding. In response to interest rate and exchange rate risks, ICBC offers global SDR bond investors customized hedging solutions, and successfully helps Chinese investors with hedging transactions to lock interest income and matured principal.

In recent years, ICBC has been closely following RMB internationalization and the “Belt and Road” initiative by integrating group-wide resources and leveraging ICBC Standard Bank’s capabilities in transaction and quotation to meet customers’ globalized, diversified financial service demand. In 2015, ICBC took the lead in introducing foreign exchange transactions and risk management services covering 80 currencies in the countries along the “Belt and Road” initiative as well as emerging markets, becoming the first Chinese bank with services fully covering currencies of the “Belt and Road” countries, with the most complete type of business, the strongest quotation capacity and the widest scope of service. In the same year, ICBC was named the “Best Foreign Exchange Market Maker in China” by Global Finance and the “Best Foreign Exchange Bank in China” by Global Finance and FinanceAsia for its excellent trading capacity. It is also the first Chinese bank independently developing derivatives pricing system. ICBC was named “the Best Bank in China” by Asia Risk for 2013 and 2015 for its leading quantitative analysis capability.