Banking News
- OCBC rolls out China expansion
Date: 2-Aug-2007 Sources: (Xinhua Online)
BEIJING, Aug. 2 -- Overseas-Chinese Banking Corp started domestic operations after incorporating in Shanghai Wednesday and plans to quadruple its outlets and embark on a hiring spree to tap China's retail yuan market.
The bank intends to increase its outlets on the Chinese mainland to 20 by 2010, Tan Wing Ming, director and president of OCBC Bank (China) Ltd, told Shanghai Daily Wednesday.
The bank will raise the number of its China employees to 1,000 in line with its business expansion.
OCBC Bank (China) Ltd, the Chinese subsidiary of the Singapore-based bank, started operations with a registered capital of 3.5 billion yuan (462.35 million U.S. dollars), up from a minimum regulatory requirement of one billion yuan.
The bank is the second Singapore bank after DBS to incorporate in Shanghai, and the 10th overseas lender to based in the city with domestic incorporation status, following rivals such as Citi and HSBC. Domestic incorporation allows overseas banks to compete against domestic rivals by offering a full range of services.
The region close to Shanghai, the Pearl River Delta and Sichuan Province will be the bank's main geographical targets.
OCBC will focus on wealth management and individual mortgages in its retail banking, said Soon Tit Koon, chairman of OCBC Bank (China).
OCBC is going after wealth management clients with more than 500,000 yuan in assets at the bank. The bank plans to charge account management fees on individuals with assets less than that figure. The fee amount has not been set.
The bank is also considering the launch of bank cards, including credit cards and debits cards, said Eric Low, head of China wealth management for OCBC, declining to give details.
The bank did not rule out the possibility of boosting its share in the Bank of Ningbo in the future, Soon said.
OCBC became the first of Singapore's three lenders to buy shares in a Chinese bank. In January 2006, it bought a 12.2-percent stake in the Bank of Ningbo, paying 570 million yuan for 250 million shares in the Zhejiang Province-based lender.
Its stake was diluted to about 10 percent after the Bank of Ningbo went public in Shenzhen on July 19.
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