Mr. Chairman, good morning. It's my great honour to be here. My name is William Zhu. I'm the president and CEO of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Canada).
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is one of the world's leading commercial banks. In terms of total assets, our group has over 20 trillion renminbi, which is under a network consisting of more than 17,500 domestic institutions, over 400 overseas subsidiaries in 41 countries and territories, over 4.8 million corporate clients, and 430 million individual clients. Our bank subsidiary in Canada established our presence in Canada in 2010. Unlike our parent bank, the size of our subsidiary here is quite small in terms of total assets. RBC is over 900 times bigger than the bank. Now we have one head office and nine branches across Canada. We have over 94% of staff hired in Canada. On November 9, 2014, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (Canada) was proudly appointed as the first renminbi carrying bank in North America, and it is the first commercial bank providing 24/7 renminbi carrying services globally with a direct connection with China's central bank's carrying system. Now the bank can provide a great price and faster door-to-door renminbi carrying services in Canada. We are in the same time zone. We are seated here by your side to help Canada fully utilize the renminbi currency for great potential.
Today I want to talk about three main points regarding the Canadian renminbi trading centre.
First, why are we talking about renminbi and not yen or euro? No matter what kind of view you have about China, there are some facts you cannot ignore. China has changed a lot in the past three decades. Now China is the world's largest trading country and has the second to largest economy. China is now, and in future still will be the most potential market in the world; hence, the renminbi is the best way to reach the Chinese market and to do business with China, to serve your Chinese clients and their counterparts.
Second, why is the Canadian renminbi training centre so important and unique? You can compare the trading volume between the American continent with China to Europe with China. If I remember correctly, the amount of this volume is quite close. However, in Europe, there are four renminbi trading centres: London, Frankfurt, Paris, and Luxembourg. Canada is the only one that has a renminbi trading centre in North America, on the American continent. Consider the time zone difference; the benefit is that it will be fully operational and cover the business hours that Asia cannot. For example, our parent bank will sign an agreement with us to operate the carrying services after the Asia cut-off time.
Third, what are our challenges? I believe there are quite a few, but I am only going to list some of them.
First, there is quite a limited time window for us to implement it because China is liberalizing capital accounts. I'm guessing in the future, in three or four years, China will be liberalizing this more, so we only have four years, with respect to a renminbi carrying centre, to fully utilize our competitive advantages.
The second is the lack of knowledge and awareness of the benefits of using the renminbi for doing business with Chinese counterparts in the private sector. According to a survey by HSBC, only 5% of companies in Canada are aware of the renminbi for doing business with their Chinese counterparts, which is a relatively small number compared with other countries.
Third, Canada as the middle market country cannot stand alone to generate huge trading volumes for the offshore centre we have here, so we need to fully bond with the whole of North America, especially the United States companies, to serve them, to accumulate enough volume to support our having very mature offshore centres in the future.
Fourth, in order to compete with other financial offshore centres on other continent, we need tailor-made renminbi products to fully support the business in this field. There's a long way to go and we are competing with other centres in productivity and efficiency.
I wanted to raise all of those four points.
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is quite willing to work with everyone here to promote this initiative in Canada, to make the the improvements in Canada a very successful story, to help Toronto as the second-largest financial centre in North America, to analogize this initiative in Canada.
Thank you very much.