China Construction Bank releases its 2011 Corporate Social Responsibility Report

Recently, China Construction Bank (“CCB” or “the Bank”) officially released its 2011 Corporate Social Responsibility (“CSR”) Report. This year’s CSR report marks the sixth consecutive year of the practice. In recent years, CCB has set up a strategic development objective in social responsibility aiming at “serving the public, promoting people’s livelihood and low carbon, being environmentally friendly and delivering sustainable development”. With the theme of “growth, harvest and development”, this report reveals the Bank’s achievements in areas including actively supporting real economy, increasing the provision of financial services related to people’s livelihood, supporting low carbon economic development, providing innovative financial services for agriculture, rural areas and farmers (collectively known as the “Three Rurals”),  caring staff and social development and actively supporting charity, while developing all lines of business prudently, in order to realize the Bank’s strategies in social responsibilities in 2011.

Growth: Prudent operation to strengthen the ability to create value

CCB’s CSR Report shows that the Bank saw a good progress in the development of its businesses in 2011 and its profitability was further strengthened. As at the end of 2011, CCB’s asset scale reached over RMB12 trillion and its operating income amounted to RMB397.09 billion. It reported RMB169.439 billion in net profit, up 25.48% from last year. The non-performing loan ratio fell by 0.05 percentage points from last year to 1.09%. The return on average assets (ROA) and weighted average return on equity (ROE) reached 1.47% and 22.51% respectively, representing an increase of 0.15 percentage points and a decrease of 0.10 percentage points.

CCB has been actively maximizing the shareholder value. In 2011, the Bank paid income tax, business taxes and surcharges and other taxes to the State at a total of RMB74.838 billion, an increase of 26% from the previous year. The social contribution value per share was RMB1.98, increased by RMB0.39 as compared to the previous year.

Harvest: Support economic development, improve people’s livelihood

In terms of public serving, CCB has speeded up building express service channels and increased the number of retail outlets and self-service facilities. In 2011, the Bank newly added 166 retail outlets, 1,004 self-service banks and 5,771 ATM machines. CCB continuously improved its products and services with regards to the experience and feelings of different customers. To realize the best customer experience, the Bank designed nine major products, including e-commerce platforms, mobile phone banking end-user and automatic fund receipts, personal online payment and security products, to cater to the demands of its electronic banking clients. In 2011, the Bank completed a total of 372 new product innovations and accomplished 531 process optimization and renovation projects, increased the refinement of customer service process and significantly strengthened its service capability.

In terms of promoting the improvement of people’s livelihood, CCB carried out small enterprise support programs as one of its business development strategies as well as social responsibility commitment. As at the end of 2011, loans to small businesses amounted to RMB913.8 billion with over 70,000 customers. With the framework of “community financial platform”, the Bank set up a community comprising public market, chamber of commerce and residential neighborhood in collaboration with Federation of Industry and Commerce, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and local governments, establishing more than 500 service platforms to provide centralized financial services to over 20,000 small and micro enterprises. Addressing the short, frequent and urgent fund raising requirement from small enterprises, the Bank operated a total of 240 “credit factory” style small enterprise service centres across the country with credit approval procedures specifically designed for small enterprise customers to improve service efficiency.

With an aim to promote agricultural modernization in China, CCB was actively engaged in agriculture-related businesses. As at the end of 2011, the balance for agriculture-related loans amounted to RMB1,049.912 billion, representing a growth of 27.71% over last year. The Bank put an emphasis on projects and areas including agricultural community construction, agricultural housing construction and agricultural infrastructure construction, approving 186 new rural construction projects throughout the year. As at the end of 2011, the balance for individual agricultural loans amounted to RMB5.424 billion, representing a growth of 47.4% over RMB1.745 billion at the beginning of the year. Currently, CCB has taken the initiative in setting up 16 rural banks.

The Bank actively supported the construction of affordable housing. As at the end of 2011, the balance of affordable housing construction loans amounted to RMB25.73 billion, representing an increase of RMB20.202 billion or 365%. In 2011, the Bank was recognized as a qualified housing provident funds lender in 29 pilot cities and had been commissioned with issuing RMB18.876 billion in housing provident funds for 66 affordable housing projects. Endeavoring to offer advanced housing financing solutions to low and middle-income residents in need of housing conditions improvement, the Bank provided a total of RMB1,317.444 billion personal housing provident funds loans as at the end of 2011.

In terms of environmental protection, with continuous efforts to follow the central government’s policies on energy conservation, emission reduction, as well as the dynamics of environmental protection standards, CCB actively supported green projects and severely controls loans to industries with high energy consumption, high pollution and overcapacity. As of the end of 2011, CCB’s balance of green loans totaled RMB219.07 billion, which was up by 11.88% from last year. CCB placed a focus on “green industries” in the allocation of its credit resources used to support strategic emerging sectors. Meanwhile, CCB integrated energy conservation and emission reduction indicators with its annual credit policy. The Bank unanimously rejected applications for loans made by clients (for projects) which did not comply with the national environmental protection policies, meet restrictions for pollution and emission and attain approval from environmental authorities. In 2011, the Bank withdrew a total of RMB23.054 billion of loans from sectors with “high energy consumption, high pollution or overcapacity”.

Development: Pay close attention to benefits of different sectors and promote harmonious development

For the caring about employee growth, CCB mainly focused on standardizing allocation order and creating harmonious allocation relationship. On the basis of realizing security of basic wages among employees, the Bank has built an incentive and restrained remuneration allocation system. In order to offer more training opportunities to employees, CCB continued to increase investment in training. In 2011, the Bank ran a total of 29,166 training sessions of various kinds. These training sessions incurred training expenses of about RMB899 million and involved an attendance of 1.32 million person-times. At the same time, the Bank kick-started a “Young Front-line Employee Assistance Programme” (EAP) to help young staff members manage their emotion and to give them guidance in dealing with workplace pressure.

In the aspect of public welfare, CCB has continuously supported public welfare establishments actively. In 2011, the Bank implemented 15 major public welfare projects and arranged a total of RMB47 million for donations.

In November 2011, CCB donated RMB7 million to China Women’s Development Foundation in support of the “Mothers’ Health Express − CCB Sponsorship Program”. The donation contributed to the “Health Express” vehicles to provide health checks, medical support and maternity care to impoverished women and women of ethic minority in provinces including Xinjiang, Qinghai and Gansu. In the same year, the Bank launched “Participate in Charitable Donations with CCB”, an online public welfare campaign, with social welfare channel of Sina.com via the Bank’s official microblog, inviting the public to vote for public welfare projects. According to the online poll results, the Bank made donations to “Entrepreneurial Aid Scheme for Migrant Workers” and “Vocational Education Program for Impoverished Children” at RMB2 million each, to “Blind Orphans Treatment Program” at RMB500,000, to “Autistic Children Treatment and Training Program” at RMB300,000 and to “Orphans in Tibetan Plateau Rescue Program” at RMB200,000.

In 2011, some regions in China were hit by earthquake, drought, floods and other natural disasters. In support of disaster-relief efforts in the affected areas, the Bank donated RMB500,000 as a relief fund to the quake stricken areas of Yingjiang in Yunnan Province, RMB3.2 million to regions devastated by floods and droughts in Guizhou Province and RMB500,000 to flood-hit areas in Zhejiang. Moreover, RMB9 million was collected as disaster relief fund to support post-disaster school reconstruction in the mudslide stricken areas in Zhouqu in Gansu Province. All in all, CCB contributed a total of RMB16.2 million disaster relief donations and organized many volunteer activities to serve more than 50,000 person-times in the year.

CCB’s efforts in undertaking social responsibility have won widespread praises and recognition from various quarters in the society. In 2011, the Bank won a number of awards including the “Best Social Responsible Enterprise 2010” by China Newsweek and “People's Award for Social Responsibility” by people.com. It ranked ninth among Chinese local enterprises and first in the financial sector in the “Top 100 China Corporate Social Responsibility Ranking” by Fortune, a US magazine.

According to Wang Hongzhang, Chairman of CCB, the Bank will continue to explore and commit itself to social responsibility actively, endeavor to become a warm and trusted bank. While undertaking its social responsibilities, CCB insists on the essential requirement of providing service to real economy and strives for improving the economy and people’s livelihood, lifting the quality and standard of service provided to real economy comprehensively, so as to foster prosperous mutual development of the Bank and real economy.