Description

Postal Savings Bank of China (“PSBC”) is the 5th largest PRC commercial bank in terms of total assets and 5th largest in terms of total deposits as of March 31, 2016. It is a subsidiary of China Post Group Corporation (“CPGC”). As of March 31, 2016, PSBC had a total of 40,057 business outlets covering all cities in China and 98.9% of the county areas, and had a retail client base of 505 million. Leveraging its large network and broad coverage in urban and county areas in China, PSBC strategically focuses on providing financial services to communities, SMEs and Agriculture/ Rural/ Farmers (“ARF”, or “Sannong”) customers and are committed to meeting the financial needs of its customers. PSBC launched a pre-IPO private placement and offered approximately16.92% ownership stake through the issuance of new shares to a shortlist of international and domestic strategic investors, including IFC. This investment is consistent with IFC’s strategy for East Asia and China is a key market in achieving the WBG goal of universal financial access by 2020. China accounts for approximately 16% or almost 400 million people of the world’s 2.5 billion unbanked population. The investment in PSBC can play a critical and strategic role in expanding financial inclusion in China as it has one of the most extensive bank networks in the world and is also the leading bank in China for SME and rural finance. The partnership is a unique opportunity for IFC to reinforce and significantly expand its mandate of financial inclusion and poverty alleviation in China, given the aligned mandate between PSBC and IFC on financial inclusion, the unique broad outreach in frontier regions, and the potential growth of the institution.