Green Finance

As of the end of 2022, CITIC Bank's balance of green loans reached RMB 323.412 billion, marking an increase of over 57% compared to 2021. These loans were primarily directed towards areas such as green infrastructure upgrades and energy conservation and environmental protection industries, which contributed to the rapid growth of the Bank's green loan business. The Bank has actively expanded its green syndicated loan business and focused on meeting the financing needs of the green industry. Through syndicated loans, the Bank supported the development of industries including new energy battery manufacturing, urban rail transportation, and photovoltaic power generation. In 2022 alone, the total amount of green syndicated loans extended reached RMB 24.38 billion, representing an increase of RMB 8.25 billion from 2021, with a growth rate of 51%. The Bank has taken proactive steps to implement the national carbon peaking action plan. While fully considering requirements such as "ensuring energy supply" and "stabilizing employment, finance, foreign trade, investment and expectations and guaranteeing residents’ employment, basic livelihood, market entities, grain energy safety, stability of industrial and supply chains, and operation of grassroots", the Bank has rigorously controlled projects with high energy consumption and emissions. Also, the Bank has scientifically managed the pace of phasing out and balanced the transition to green practices with energy structure, development with emission reduction, overall considerations with local considerations, and short-term perspectives with medium-to-long-term perspectives. As of the end of 2022, the Bank's balance of loans in the "high energy consumption and high emission" industries stood at RMB 64.977 billion and accounts for 2.67% of the total corporate loans, slightly lower by 0.08% than that in 2021.

The Bank has been diligently exploring opportunities in green industries such as clean energy, clean transportation, green construction, industrial transformation, and pollution prevention. We are committed to assisting high-quality enterprises in reducing financing costs, broadening financing channels, and meeting diverse financing needs. In 2022, the Bank successfully underwrote a total of 12 green bonds, amounting to RMB 5.526 billion. As of the end of 2022, the total cumulative balance of green bond investments reached RMB 10.676 billion, encompassing various types of bonds including green asset-backed securities, green financial bonds, green corporate bonds, green short-term financing bonds, and green government bonds. As of the end of 2022, the Bank's total cumulative trading volume of green bonds reached RMB 39.662 billion.

The Bank has implemented and promoted the sales and services of green fund products, and focused on reviewing ESG theme, green, low-carbon, and other green fund projects, and guiding social capital to diversified green industry. As of the end of 2022, the Bank had sold a total of RMB 143.6 million of ESG theme funds, including RMB 670,000 of ESG theme fund, RMB 6 million of social responsibility theme funds, and RMB 136.93 million of green, low-carbon, and environmental protection theme funds, and was commissioned to sell RMB 118.9173 million of ESG theme-related holdings, including RMB 42.4445 million of ESG theme holdings, RMB 61.5152 million of social theme holdings, and RMB 14.9576 million of green theme holdings.

The Bank actively delivered green value and creatively developed green wealth management products and services. In 2022, the Bank issued nine ESG and green theme products. As of the end of 2022, the Bank had 12 surviving green theme wealth management products with a scale of RMB 2.996 billion, and was commissioned to sell two ESG theme and green development-related wealth management products, with a cumulative sales volume of RMB 917 million and a product inventory of RMB 917 million.

The Bank regarded green leasing as a key direction for exploring financing leasing business, focused on the three major areas of "clean energy, energy conservation and environmental protection, and new energy vehicles", and actively promoted innovation in green leasing business models and financial technology empowerment. As of the end of 2022, the balance of green environmental protection leasing accounted for nearly 60% of all leasing businesses, and the green leasing balance reached RMB 25.828 billion.

The Bank continued to expand the business types and service scenarios of green consumption, created a “new energy + green finance” model, took new energy vehicle consumption credit as the key support direction of the Bank’s financial business of vehicle scenario in 2022, and introduced a credit policy of minimum 15% down payment of new energy vehicle loans, which was 5% lower than the down payment of ordinary vehicle loans. In 2022, the Bank provided nearly 60,000 green finance loans for battery electric vehicle consumption, newly issued related loans of nearly RMB 5.6 billion, covering more than 60 auto brands, and more than 4,000 cooperative dealers to effectively expand the business scenario of the Bank for new energy vehicle consumption loans.

Relying on the expert resources of “CITIC Think Tank” and combining the license and consulting advantages of CIAM Carbon Assets Management Limited, the Bank was committed to providing customers with services such as design of emission reduction and carbon reduction schemes, carbon asset management, carbon financial services, corporate and personal carbon accounts, and co exporting the “CITIC ‘carbon peaking and carbon neutrality’ full industry chain solution” with “green technology + green finance” as the core, to comprehensively help achieve the “carbon peaking and carbon neutrality” strategic goal. As of the end of 2022, China CITIC Bank International has undertaken a total of nine “green sustainable financing structure consulting” projects, of which seven projects were exclusive green sustainable financing structure consultants.