China CITIC Bank is making good on its strategic ambitions to become an integrated financial services provider, with sharp growth in its scale of operations last year.
According to China CITIC’s recently released annual report for 2016, the bank’s on and off balance sheet integrated financial operations reached 8.1091 trillion yuan last year, for year-on-year growth of 21.18%.
Of this amount on balance sheet integrated financial operations grew 16.15% year on year to reach 5.0328 trillion yuan, while off balance sheet operations surged by over 30% to hit 3.0763 trillion yuan.
China CITIC’s explicit ambition is to become China’s “best integrated financial services bank,” that provides deposits and loans, transaction settlement, wealth management, financial advisory and other services, as well as securities, trust, fund and lease financial products.
China CITIC chairman Li Qingping reiterated the bank’s ambitions to expand the scale of its operations in order to shore up its competitiveness.
“Medium-scale shared-controlled commercial banks do not possess any marked advantages in terms of network points and staff numbers compared to large-scale state-owned banks – this is just a fact,” said Li. “To this end, we must pursue a unique business path based on our own unique features and advantages, in order to be able to effectively respond to intense market competition.”
