ICBC's loan to small and micro businesses are gaining momentum. By the end of June, the balance reached RMB 1.98 trillion, up by 9.9% from a year earlier, and making ICBC the largest lender for small and micro businesses in China. Meanwhile, ICBC has taken strong measures to lower the financing costs of small and micro businesses and proactively exempted them from all loan service fees, which alone saves around RMB 7 billion.

According to an official of ICBC, small and micro businesses are very important for ICBC in serving the real economy and promoting its own business transformation. In recent years, the demands of small and micro businesses for financial services have been satisfied as a priority through measures such as product innovation, mechanism optimization, resource allocation, specialized evaluation, pushing the growth rate of loans for small and micro business customers significantly higher than that of overall loans, and the success rate for loan application as well as the customer growth rate above the average of corporate customers. In the meantime, ICBC has leveraged its IT strengths and financial expertise to innovate online and offline service model, operation model and risk control model for small and micro businesses, and offer more professional, standardized and micro-services to meet their financing demands during startup and innovation.

In terms of operational innovation, ICBC has set up a number of small and micro financial service centers in prefecture-level cities and counties where most small and micro businesses converge. These centers provide large-volume, standardized and one-stop services for small and micro businesses, which has improved service efficiency and capabilities. By the end of June, ICBC has in place 179 such centers nationwide, more than half of which are located in Midwest and Northeast China. In the first half this year, these centers achieved a loan balance of RMB 279.5 billion, providing financial support to more than 10,000 small and micro customers and maintaining the loan growth and the non-performing loans ratio at a solid level.

In product and service innovation, ICBC has launched a series of online and offline financing products by considering the "short-term, high-frequency and urgent-need" features of financing demands from small and micro businesses. Firstly, ICBC has leveraged its internet financial innovation advantages to launch a series of online financing products such as online revolving loans, E-supply Chain Financing and corporate Easy Loan, providing internet financing worth over RMB 2.1 trillion to around 95,000 small and micro businesses by the end of June with a balance of over RMB 240 billion. ICBC has become the largest internet financing service provider for small and micro businesses in China. Secondly, ICBC has worked closely with governments to strengthen bank-government cooperation and provide financing support for small and micro customers which have growth potential but lack collateral. For instance, the "Bank-Government Link" product launched by ICBC has a financing balance of around RMB 5 billion and covers 16 provinces nationwide within less than a year. Thirdly, to encourage mass entrepreneurship and innovation, ICBC has flexibly used financing options such as small and micro venture capital fund guarantee, pledge on intellectual property and pledge on stock right, and launched various entrepreneurial financing products such as "Small and Micro Pioneering Loan" and "Technology Loan". Since last year, "Small and Micro Pioneering Loan" has supported around 2,800 asset-light and unsecured small and micro businesses in need of funds in Jiangsu Province, with the loan balance exceeding RMB10 billion. The service has so far covered the entire Jiangsu Province. The "ICBC Morningstar" service for small and micro businesses in Beijing comprise more than 30 financial products including loan, settlement and investment banking. It is a one-stop financial service which effectively satisfies the financial demands of a large batch of high-tech enterprises in the full life circle from start-up, development, maturity to listing. Fourthly, to boost private investment growth and satisfy the demands of small and micro businesses for fixed assets investment, ICBC has launched some medium and long term loans for the purpose of purchasing plants and commercial houses as well as technical transformation and upgrading. The financing maturity can be up to 5-10 years. By the end of June, the financing balance amounted to RMB 20 billion.

To address high financing cost, ICBC has creatively launched internet financing service as well as loan renewal service and revolving loan product to satisfy customer’s demands for consistent use of funds, help small and micro businesses lower fund occupation costs and improve fund turnover. In addition, ICBC has issued a series of preferential policies regarding fee reduction in recent years, canceling 26 kinds of charges and service fees, which reduce the costs of small and micro businesses by around RMB 7 billion per year.