ICBC draws 30.7m online clients
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) says the number of its retail internet banking customers has surged 54 per cent year on year to 30.66 million to June 30 as the mainland's largest lender has encouraged more people to transfer money or pay bills online.
The number of individual internet customers increased by 7.41 million in the first half of the year, the bank said.
New corporate internet customers signed up by the bank numbered 191,000, bringing the total to 800,000.
'The growth of internet banking at ICBC is within expectations as lenders tend to use it to supplement traditional banking,' said May Yan Meizhi, a senior credit officer at Moody's Investors Service.
ICBC said internet banking transactions by individual customers jumped 244 per cent to 1.5 trillion yuan in the first half, while transactions by corporate customers rose 78.1 per cent to 35.6 trillion yuan.
Electronic banking accounted for 33.5 per cent of total transactions, an increase of 3.4 percentage points from the end of last year, the bank said.
Ms Yan said global banks were increasingly expanding their internet banking operations to cut the cost of operating branch networks.
In Hong Kong, HSBC saw its retail internet banking customers increase 20.4 per cent last year to 1.168 million from 2005. The number of transactions accounted for 33.5 per cent of the total, a 3 percentage point gain.
HSBC's army of business internet customers increased 24 per cent to 77,000 in Hong Kong last year, and the number climbed further to 90,000 in the first quarter.
ICBC said more customers were making money transfers, remittances and fee payments online.
'The amount of individual remittances through e-channels was more than 280 billion yuan, while the value for fee payments reached 23.68 billion yuan in the first half of the year,' the lender added.
The bank said internet banking was also boosted by wealth management, with many customers making investments in unit trusts online. It said unit trust transactions through the internet amounted to 188.4 billion yuan in the first half.
Meanwhile, lending through the internet reached 1.39 billion yuan in the first six months, an increase of 200 million yuan or 778 per cent from a year ago.
Ms Yan said the expansion of internet banking could also help lenders expand their income streams, although the online service would not totally replace traditional banking services.
ICBC last week said that it might report a more than 50 per cent growth in net profit for the first six months.
Smart banking
Interim online individual transactions jump 244pc to 1.5 trillion yuan
Percentage jump in the number of ICBC retail internet banking clients 54%
