During the last few years, international trade finance is one important approach of ICBC to support the healthy growth of real economy. Through the delivery of trade finance solutions, ICBC achieves significant progress in driving the transformation and upgrade of foreign trade companies as well as China's export sector restructuring. In 2011, ICBC ranked No.1 among the peers by providing over USD 150 billion in international trade facility to foreign trade companies for their solid growth.

International trade finance is an area of commercial facility where banks provide short-term loans to importers/exporters to enable goods to be imported or exported under the settlement options as agreed. International trade finance is particularly well-suited in meeting the funding need of foreign trade companies due to the flexibility in loan tenure, credit line granted, guarantee options and borrowing cost.

To cope with the transformation and development of foreign trade companies driven by the new landscape and new requirements, ICBC leverages product innovation to extend its product lines and services of trade finance encompassing supply chain finance, product portfolios (in home and foreign currencies, domestic and foreign trade) and processing trade security deposit ledger. At the heart of the offering in international finance solutions are import TT financing, import L/C opening, import documentary bill, forfaiting, export factoring, order financing and export invoice financing. Under the "Service Supermarket" model, ICBC offers integrated services in settlement, financing, wealth management and risk management covering the whole process of international trade and extending to domestic trade. Backed by the state-of-the-art systems and overseas networks, ICBC branches in China and overseas join force to provide unique trade finance solutions tailored to customers engaged in international trade, helping them effectively reduce capital cost, circumvent exchange rate risk, relieve financial burden arising from payment to external parties and assure timely collection of account receivables. An example is the processing trade security deposit ledger which is an innovative service for processing trade enterprises in China. In 2011, ICBC concluded 25,000 transactions with ledger amount reaching over USD 27 billion, which was a great support to the growth of processing trade enterprises.

ICBC has played particular attention on the support to small-and-medium foreign trade companies while gathering momentum in trade finance business. When granting credit to small-and-medium foreign trade companies, ICBC uses their sales revenue and operating cash flow as the key criteria since they have less net assets and high liability ratio, but reliable trading relationship, stable logistics and cash flow. In response to the strong timeliness and high efficiency of small-and-medium foreign trade companies in obtaining "short, frequent, urgent" loans, ICBC has streamlined its business processes covering credit rating, credit authorization, evaluation of pledge and business approval. Zhejiang Shuangjia Garments Co., Ltd ("Shuangjia") is deeply impressed by these changes. Shuangjia mainly engages in the production and sales of shirts. The company is a typical export company with over 90% Shuangjia shirts sold to Russia, UK, South Africa, USA and other international markets. Since 2011, Shuangjia has won a large number of customer orders, however, the company lacks the necessary working capital to expand production timely. In the first instance, the fastest and most direct way to get working capital is bank loan. Yet Shuangjia is a small company, the loan through collateral is far not enough to support the long-term development of the company. After numerous visits, ICBC customer manager designed a tailored finance solution for Shuangjia. Apart from the loan through collateral and guarantee, ICBC also granted a credit line of RMB 7 million for Shuangjia's international trade to address its immediate need of working capital.