China Citic Bank eyes mobile banking increase in Hong Kong, aims to save 1 million sheets of paper a year
- China Citic Bank aims to turn its 24 Hong Kong branches paperless within the next year as it promotes mobile banking
- Wider acceptance of mobile banking gives smaller lenders that lack branch networks a chance to compete with the sector’s behemoths, analyst says
China Citic Bank International, a Hong Kong-based mid-tier lender, aims to cut paper usage in its 24 branches and save 1 million pieces of paper next year, according to a senior executive.
The bank is joining its bigger peers such as HSBC, Standard Chartered and Bank of China (Hong Kong) in encouraging clients to use its mobile app to handle banking transactions and cut down on the use of paper forms at its branches.
The lender, part of China Citic Bank, has allowed customers to open accounts online since 2018 and offered online insurance sales and wealth management in the past few years.
“After the Covid pandemic over the past three years, we found customers generally get used to using mobile phones to handle most of their simple banking transactions,” Wendy Yuen Miu-ling, deputy head of the personal and business banking group of the lender, said in a media briefing last week.
“Mobile banking will be our priority of expansion in the next few years. Even when customers go to physical branches, we want to let our staff use the electronic method to serve them instead of filling a lot of paper forms.”
