China Construction Bank (CCB) obtained “The Excellence in Retail Management Award” through the appraisal of “The Retail Financial Services Excellence Awards” serial as disclosed by The Asian Banker Magazine on April 24. Once more it signifies another recognition of the achievement of CCB in its retail banking services and the level of its retail risk management.

With headquarters based in Singapore and distribution covers all major financial institutions in Pacific Asia, “The Asian Banker” magazine established “The Retail Financial Services Excellence Awards” in 2001. The appraisal panel of the Awards is chaired by Mr. Philip Strause, the ex-General Director of Afro-Asian Financial Services, Deloitte Consultancy. Panel members include experienced personnel of international renowned retail banking departments and market research analysts of reputable institutions. AC Nielsen, a well-known marketing research organization, is in charge of the accreditation of awards for consumer identification study and appraisal for goodwill of financial organizations.

CCB has targeted at retail banking services as one of its key area of strategic transformation in recent years. Service qualities and profit margins of its retail sector have swiftly improved as a result. The CCB board amended its development strategic master plan in 2007 and further confirmed the development target and bearing of core business like retail banking provided. Acting on its policy of “client-orientated” operation, efforts are made in marketing the key interests of network transformation whose average day sales have been increased by 2.15 times as against the original sales volume before transformation. Work efficiency has improved by 30% to 40%, while client waiting time has shortened by 29%. Personal loans business maintains its dominance in the market with loan balance standing to be 723,805,000,000 yuan, marking an increase of 138,720,000,000, out of which personal mortgage loans have surged up by 23.33% or an increase by 99,849,000,000 yuan.

With the steady growth of various businesses, CCB continuously assesses risk management, determined to enhance the ability in internal control and risk management. At present, CCB has sophisticatedly built the retail risk management system framework for different retail products and retail flows.  The Bank also makes use of Six Sigma strategies in building up policies, technical tools and workflows in effectively differentiating, balancing and controlling retail business risks.  In 2007, CCB has set up the “CCB Retail Credit Policy” that clearly laid down the strategies in retail business risk management and have boosted the unity of retail business risk bias.  In addition, CCB has completed the development and overline operation of the retail assessment card among peers based on the credit assessment model, with the objective of auto-examining and risk-tracking in retail credit business.  Accordingly, it has significantly enforced the volume calculating level for retail business risk management.  By optimizing the preparation work for “Basel II”, it will be able to activate the operation of an Internal Ratings-based (IRB) system for measuring retail exposure.  The Bank becomes the leader among the peers in using international advanced risk management tool and by applying pressure assessment to retail businesses such as property loan and personal property loan, it has undoubtedly strengthened the retail business risk management standard.  In addition, CCB pursues aggressively the work for risk alert and education, especially on personal finance products such as  finance management products.  This can fully alert the customers of the risks and assist them in developing the risk investment and financial management knowledge.