China Construction Bank Strengthens Internal Management and Risk Control

The new leadership of China Construction Bank (CCB) Corporation, since its establishment in mid-March this year, has been committed to improving the corporate governance structure. It has set up the standardized leadership responsibility system and the check and balance mechanism and properly handled the relations among the Party Committee, the Shareholders’ Meeting, the Board of Directors and the Board of Supervisors and the management. It can be said that the various measures taken by CCB to improve the risk control have achieved good results.

According to a member of the senior management of CCB, the bank has taken strong measures to strengthen risk control, supervision and check and balance. Since mid-March CCB has strictly standardized the rules of procedure and decision-making process. It released the Six Requirements on Building an Honest and Clean Party Committee of China Construction Bank Corporation on April 15 and the Regulations on the Accountability of Senior Executives and the Higher Authorities of Units Where Law Cases Occur on May 8. It is only half month after the Regulations was released that the presidents of CCB’s Hunan and Shanxi branches took the blame for the frequent occurrence of law cases at the grassroots level in their jurisdictions and resigned. It is said that the bank is also developing the Scoring Management Rules on the Violations of Regulations for all the staffs, with the purpose of effectively curbing the frequent breaches of rules and regulations and reducing the risks of law cases at the very root cause.

To support the law case reduction campaign launched by the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), from April 22 to May 15, CCB set up 35 special supervision and inspection teams composed of backbone staffs from 16 departments of the Headquarter and the branches and sub-branches headed by the senior executives of the Headquarter at the general manager level to extensively inspect 38 provincial and municipal branches and their sub-branches nationwide. The self-examination and inspection of lower-level units have been launched throughout the bank. Up to now 120,753 person times of self-examination has been conducted in 12,306 outlets. 3,681 inspection teams including 21,392 person times have been dispatched, examining 30 routes and 320 items. According to incomplete statistics, since the beginning of this year CCB has successfully prevented 31 law cases, avoiding risks and losses worth RMB 36.39 million. The campaign has achieved good results.

The member also said while exploring institutional means and measures to prevent risks and curb violations of rules CCB is taking the opportunity of carrying out the “education campaign to preserve the advanced nature of party members” to strengthen the ideological and political and legal education of party members, especially the senior executives and build an honest and clean party committee. In the provincial branches it established the association system of the party committee members of the Headquarter. Those members should examine whether the management of the association branches establishes, improves and strictly implements the democratic centralism and other rules and help the management raise their sense of implementing the principle of democratic centralism. To push forward the education campaign to preserve the advanced nature of party members, the party committee members paid field visits to the associating branches to conduct research, examined the deployment of the education campaign and the progress of various tasks, provided guidance throughout the campaign, listened to the progress report regularly and raised suggestions and opinions.

It is said that Zhang Enzhao, former Party Committee Secretary General and Chairman of CCB is being inspected by the party's disciplinary organ for allegedly violating regulations. According to the above source, the problem of Zhang Enzhao forces the senior management throughout the bank to pay greater attention to being honest and clean and risk management. Currently various business of the bank develops healthily, with the performance improving continuously. The IPO of the bank is also being accelerated.