Group driving industrial upgrade, innovation

Bank of China, committed to supporting the real economy, provides comprehensive products and services in financial technology, green finance, inclusive finance, pension finance, and digital finance, driving the nation's financial strength and bolstering Chinese-style modernization.

Partner for tech businesses

In the first half of this year, BOC established tech finance centers at its headquarters and in 24 domestic first-tier branches. Additionally, the bank has constructed a multi-level "headquarters-branch-sub-branch" organizational system, creating specialized tech finance branches or distinctive outlets in key regions across the country.

At the same time, BOC has focused on core customer groups, utilizing digital tools to create profiles for precise and targeted support. The bank has upgraded its specialized tech finance credit model and continuously improved a full-life-cycle service system to better meet the financial needs of tech companies, especially small and medium-sized tech enterprises.

As of the end of June, BOC had provided more than 1.7 trillion yuan ($238.76 billion) in credit support to 83,500 tech companies, with comprehensive services exceeding 650 billion yuan.

Green action plan

BOC has also developed the Green Finance Action Plan and the 2024 Green Finance Work Plan, proposing dozens of detailed measures to ensure that green finance development is effectively realized.

The bank has built its global "BOC Green plus" brand, participating in internationally influential benchmark environmentally friendly projects. BOC ranks first among Chinese banks in Bloomberg's lists of the Global Green Use of Proceeds Loans and Sustainability-Linked Loans.

It also leads the market in green bond underwriting, having pioneered the issuance of the world's first sustainable development bonds under the Belt and Road Initiative. For instance, the bank issued the country's first nature-based commercial ESG-linked loan and, in collaboration with the ChinaBond Pricing Center, launched the ChinaBond BOC Green Bond Index, providing high-quality green bond market-making services.

BOC is supporting the development of the national carbon market. It was among the first to open nationwide greenhouse gas voluntary emission reduction market trading and registration accounts, effectively supporting the green and low-carbon transformation of the economy and society.

By the end of June, BOC's green credit balance exceeded 3.5 trillion yuan, representing a year-on-year growth of over 35 percent.

Inclusive finance

BOC has been serving a wide range of inclusive customer groups. As of the end of June, its balance of inclusive loans to small and micro enterprises exceeded 2 trillion yuan, benefiting over 1.3 million small and micro market entities.

To support the growth of small and micro tech enterprises, the bank has extended credit balances of over 430 billion yuan to national and provincial "little giant" specialized and innovative SMEs, with over 28,000 such enterprises receiving credit. BOC leads the industry in the credit coverage rate for these specialized and innovative SMEs.

BOC has issued over 430 billion yuan in special loans for job retention and expansion to more than 28,000 companies recommended by human resources and social security departments.

The bank has further enriched the functions of its Huiruyuan inclusive finance service app, offering more products for diverse scenarios, specialized services, convenient customer experiences, smarter risk control, and efficient technology operations. The Huiruyuan app has over 700,000 registered users.

BOC has also built a global cross-border matchmaking ecosystem, hosting 124 matchmaking events and providing "financing plus intelligence" services to nearly 50,000 enterprises in 126 countries and regions.

The bank has continuously increased financial support in key agricultural sectors, contributing to food security, promoting the revitalization of rural cultural and tourism industries, and helping farmers increase their income and wealth.

The balance of agricultural-related loans stands at 2.28 trillion yuan, with the balance of inclusive agricultural loans exceeding 440 billion yuan, and loan growth in key counties exceeding the average growth rate of all loans.

Pension services

In the realm of pension finance, BOC continues to optimize a diversified and professional product and service system.

As one of the first national social security fund and basic pension insurance fund custodians, and one of the earliest commercial banks to offer corporate annuity services, BOC is a market leader in terms of the number of corporate annuity individual accounts and the scale of annuity custodian assets, with over 200 billion yuan in annuity trust assets.

BOC also provides comprehensive personal pension services through its mobile banking app and offline outlets, including a one-stop pension account feature on the app that allows customers to view unified information on basic pension insurance, corporate annuities and personal pensions.

The bank supports the development of the pension insurance system and has built over 10,000 elderly-friendly service outlets and more than 1,000 model pension service outlets.

As part of the People's Bank of China's pilot program for special re-loans for inclusive pensions, BOC has helped inclusive pension institutions reduce financing costs.

The bank has also hosted a silver-age matchmaking event at the China International Import Expo for four consecutive years, promoting cooperation between domestic and foreign pension industry enterprises in equity, products, services, and technology.

Digital transformation

BOC continues to enhance the quality and efficiency of its financial services by fully advancing the digital transformation of the group, strengthening data governance, and steadily advancing 39 strategic technology projects.

The bank is accelerating the transformation of its technical architecture, with a total of 29,000 servers on its cloud platform, and is advancing the research and application of new technologies.

The bank's robotic process automation and optical character recognition technologies are applied in over 2,900 scenarios across channel operations, corporate finance, and personal finance.

BOC is also exploring the application of privacy computing, the internet of things, and other technologies, and is piloting large model applications, including code assistance, focused on computing power, algorithms, and data.

In the field of personal finance, BOC has introduced new features to its domestic mobile banking app, including housing fund services and a "Night Market" for wealth management products, with peak monthly active users exceeding 90 million. The bank is also promoting version 6.0 of its overseas mobile banking app, which includes key features such as soft tokens and online renminbi salary direct transfers.

In the area of digital currency, BOC is accelerating the high-quality integration of digital RMB with traditional business strengths. The bank assisted the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates in completing its first direct cross-border payment transaction in "digital dirhams" as part of the multilateral central bank digital currency bridge, or mBridge, project.