Last year marked a milestone for Industrial Bank Private Banking, under the leadership of Dai Xuxian, general manager of private banking.
The bank became the first among its joint stock peers to receive a private banking licence from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission. It was also the first private banking licence granted in the country in a decade.
Industrial Bank made the application in 2019, received the approval in April 2021 and got the final green light to open for business last December.
The process has been long, but it will probably be worth the effort: Industrial Bank Private Banking now joins its much larger state-owned peers – Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of Communications and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China – as a licenced private bank. As such, it will be better regulated, with improved risk segregation from its bank parent.
Industrial Bank, which had assets under management of over Rmb742 billion ($117 billion) by the end of 2021, isn’t one of the largest private banks in China, but it has continued to expand its business at impressive speed since the private banking department was set up in 2011.