On January 19, 2006, China Construction Bank (CCB) Trade Service Center started operation in Shanghai, marking a major step for the bank to reform the operational procedure and realize centralized processing of its international business in accordance with widely accepted international standards.

As the Chinese financial market gets increasingly open and foreign financial institutions flock into China after its accession to the WTO, domestic banks have to compete with their international counterparts. In particular, with the domestic financial market further opening this year, facing the intensifying peer competition Chinese banks must reorganize the internal business process, control operational cost, and raise business efficiency and service quality.

It is said that leading international banks generally establish regional trade service centers worldwide to centralize the processing of international service documentation, which has hence become the widely recognized international settlement model and reflects the development stage of the international services and business philosophy of a given bank. Taking into account the characteristics of international settlement business and the current business development, referring to the experiences of its international counterparts, CCB decided to set up the Trade Service Center in Shanghai with the goal of enhancing core competitiveness of its banking services.

The establishment of the Trade Service Center will change the decentralized processing at different branches into a centralized processing model. CCB will appoint the most professional international service documentation staffs to make documentation processing more standardized, which will help not only raise the efficiency of international settlement but also cut cost and increase the capacity of risk control. In the process CCB will be able to build a team of professional and capable experts of international business. To maintain the stable growth of international settlement business, CCB will first realize centralized processing in a number of branches in 2006 and then in the rest branches step by step. With the centralized processing of international settlement documents, the international trade service departments of various branches will work together to develop new products and expand market.

The consolidation of business processing model requires the support of leading business processing system. In 2005, CCB developed the new generation of trade financing system for processing international settlement services. With an advanced architecture, the system supports the centralized business processing model of different levels, makes the electronic and centralized international settlement business of CCB possible and paves the way for the establishment of the Trade Service Center.