Industrial Bank's "Liftoff" Enterprise Overseas Expansion Full Cycle, Innovating Financial Services to Break Down Globalization Barriers

With the Belt and Road Initiative being pushed forward in depth, China’s pace of industrial upgrading has accelerated. The “going global” blueprint for Chinese companies is evolving from a single focus on exporting products into a deep integration of overseas capacity, overseas branding, overseas technology, and full industrial-chain layout. This profound global transformation has shifted the demand for financial services from traditional settlement and financing to “full-cycle, one-stop” comprehensive solutions that include credit enablement, risk management, capital operations, and local compliance management.

As a domestically systemically important bank, Industrial Bank has deeply grasped this trend and proactively embedded its services into every key step of corporate internationalization. It is actively building and improving a “five-in-one” cross-border financial comprehensive service system both at home and abroad, online and offline, in both domestic and foreign currencies, between onshore and offshore, and covering commercial banking and investment banking, breaking through going-global barriers with innovative products and escorting companies’ growth with hands-on services.

“From months to 7 days”

Standby letters of guarantee with separation, solving the credit bottleneck for companies going overseas

Chinese infrastructure construction companies taking overseas projects usually need to set up local project companies in the host countries as the contracting entities. However, newly established overseas entities generally lack operating track records and accumulated credit, making it difficult for them to obtain credit lines from local banks. They are also unable to issue bid bonds and performance bonds as required by project owners, becoming the “first hurdle” for Chinese companies to participate in international tenders. Based on deep credit granted to domestic parent companies, Industrial Bank has innovatively launched the separated standby letter of guarantee model—using domestic credit to empower overseas entities and opening the “last mile” for infrastructure going global.

Yangtze Fine Mechanical Steel Structure (Group) Co., Ltd. of Anhui (hereinafter “Jinggong Steel Structure”) recently won a landmark stadium project in Saudi Arabia. However, in the early stage of bidding, the project owner required that bid bonds must be issued by a locally registered project company. Jinggong Steel Structure’s subsidiary newly established in Saudi Arabia had no operating history and no bank credit line, so applying for a bond under the traditional model would take at least one to two months.

Jinggong Steel Structure’s Deputy Chief Financial Officer, Ling Xianyou, said, “Without a bank credit line, we can’t issue bid bonds and performance bonds as required by the project owner, and the project doesn’t even have the eligibility to bid.” This issue had caused many excellent Chinese contractors to stop at the gate of overseas projects.

While several banks were still studying solutions, Industrial Bank, based on long-term cooperation and trust with Jinggong Steel Structure, proposed an innovative solution.

Targeting the pain points above, Industrial Bank has innovatively launched a “separated standby letter of guarantee” solution. The core of this model is to achieve the “separation of the credit entity and the usage entity.” Specifically, based on Industrial Bank’s in-depth understanding of and credit support for Jinggong Steel Structure’s parent company in China, it uses its credit as the guarantee to directly issue letters of guarantee for Jinggong Steel Structure’s project companies overseas.

“As simply put, it leverages the credit advantages of the domestic group to provide credit support to newly established overseas subsidiaries, thereby solving their insufficient credit problem,” Zhang Jingxing, Head of the International Business Department of Industrial Bank Hefei Branch, explained.

Facing challenges such as reviewing cross-border legal documents involved in this guarantee business, the stringent formatting requirements from overseas project owners, and extremely high timeliness, Industrial Bank completed all guarantee issuance within only 7 days, ensuring that the company could successfully obtain tender qualification. Meanwhile, relying on existing credit lines from the domestic parent company, the model eliminates the need for the enterprise to seek additional high-cost guarantees overseas, reducing overall guarantee costs by about 30%.

“This product perfectly fits and resolves the credit difficulties faced by Chinese companies going global,” Zhang Jingxing said. Not only did it help Jinggong Steel Structure successfully win landmark projects such as the Kenyatta Stadium City in Kenya and the BDO Financial Center in the Philippines, but it has also been replicated across projects of other “going-global” enterprises.

Just in 2025, the volume of overseas standby letter-of-guarantee business at Industrial Bank Hefei Branch reached RMB 2.0 billion, effectively meeting the going-global needs of many new energy and high-end manufacturing enterprises.

“From several million yuan to several hundred million yuan”

Non-financial support for hard-tech companies to reach the world

For a leading humanoid robotics company like UBTECH Robotics Corp. Ltd. (hereinafter “UBTECH”), going overseas is not merely market expansion, but an inevitable choice to integrate into the global innovation ecosystem and participate in high-level competition. However, every step of the global journey of hard-tech companies comes with massive capital needs and complex compliance challenges.

After UBTECH successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at the end of 2023, the company immediately faced challenges when new foreign exchange management rules took effect at the beginning of 2024. “Whether overseas raised funds can return in a timely and safe manner directly affects the R&D progress of the next-generation products and the market first-mover advantage. It is crucial for us to seize the development window,” said Zhang Ju, UBTECH’s Secretary of the Board and CFO.

After learning about the company’s needs, Industrial Bank quickly formed a dedicated team covering multiple departments such as international business and FICC, to tailor a comprehensive solution of “FX registration + cross-border settlement + FX risk hedging” for UBTECH. Ultimately, it helped the company implement the first overseas overseas listing registration banking business in the Shenzhen region.

“Throughout the process, Industrial Bank responded very quickly and provided strong support. The smooth return of the raised funds played an important role in helping us seize a historical opportunity,” Zhang Ju said. She further pointed out that for companies like UBTECH, support from multi-tier capital markets is “critical—the relationship between 0 and 1.” The debt support provided by Industrial Bank at different stages is precisely an indispensable part of this support system.

“Starting from a few million yuan, and now reaching several hundred million yuan, we have been continuously increasing our support based on UBTECH’s needs at different development stages,” recalled Cao Ming, President of Industrial Bank Shenzhen Nanyou Sub-branch. Today, their cooperation has expanded from a single loan to a full range of areas including revolving loans, bank acceptances, letters of credit, letters of guarantee, and FX settlement and sales.

Industrial Bank embeds its services into the customer’s core production and operating processes through scenario-based integrated financial solutions. For enterprises such as large-scale import and export businesses, leading players in high-end manufacturing, and life sciences and pharmaceutical R&D, it focuses on FX risk hedging and financing needs, closely monitors the injection of foreign-currency equity, offshore debt borrowing, and IPO fund-raising proceeds, handles regulatory communications and registration, and provides one-stop services.

Wang Yinglie, General Manager of the International Business Department of Industrial Bank Shenzhen Branch, said that by leveraging the experience of its global service network, Industrial Bank can integrate professional resources such as collaborating law firms and accounting firms to provide one-stop “financial + non-financial” going-global escort services to truly accompany hard-tech enterprises as they move from China to the world.

From financing to insight

System-driven solutions build a new going-global financial ecosystem

Enterprises in different industries and at different stages of development have different financial needs for going overseas. For commercial banks, what matters is providing targeted cross-border financial services.

In recent years, Industrial Bank has built on its cross-border financial service foundation and a diversified account system including FT/EF/NRA/HT. By centering on the integration of three major business segments—corporate finance, retail, and interbank business—it has constructed a going-global financial service system characterized by “accounts as the foundation, products as the core, technology as the wing, and an ecosystem as the pulse.” This helps customers cross country barriers and achieve global development, while continuously improving the level of international business services.

Industrial Bank focuses on enterprises’ needs for multi-currency liquidity management and FX risk hedging in their “going global” process, and continues to provide end-to-end product solutions covering spot, forward, swaps, options, FX pairs, and currency swaps. It also offers customized financial products according to customer needs. At the same time, through structured financing tools and cross-border bond issuance, it provides more flexible structured products based on FICC business to domestic enterprises.

More specifically, Industrial Bank has built a tiered and categorized service system to precisely respond to demands, offering customized services such as “global treasury.” It helps solve complex needs such as global capital centralization. It also launches digital-smart products such as convenient remittances, cross-border micro-loans, automated issuance of letters of credit, and online letters of guarantee—connecting the “last mile” of cross-border financing and fast settlement.

Efficiency, convenience, and diversification are the typical characteristics of Industrial Bank’s going-global financial services, which is enabled by its cross-border service network spanning across the globe.

Industrial Bank has coverage across five continents, with 94 countries and more than 1,200 custody/guarantee partner banks. It builds a clearing system covering 15 major mainstream and characteristic currencies. Not only can it link on-balance-sheet and off-balance-sheet funds to provide credit line exposures to more than 190 foreign banks across 36 countries and regions worldwide, it also integrates the group’s capabilities for internationalization to create a cross-border ecosystem for the bank-to-bank platform. It provides product collaboration for domestic and overseas financial institutions, such as transferring and opening letters of credit, forfaiting, and agency derivative trading. Leveraging overseas branch relationships, it offers one-stop comprehensive services including clearing and settlement, investment and financing, and FICC trading through partners on the bank-to-bank platform.

It is worth mentioning that while providing financing services, Industrial Bank also provides intellectual support for Chinese companies going global. On one hand, it connects with local cross-border public service platforms and establishes a policy-sharing window to realize information sharing among enterprises, governments, and banks, and to develop in parallel with emerging trade models. On the other hand, it leverages the group’s research capabilities to provide deep analyses of the macroeconomy, industry analysis, bulk commodities, and the FX market. This helps enterprises understand international trends and industry prospects, and it guides companies to manage FX risk using tools such as forward contracts, swaps, and options, thereby supporting the steady development of enterprises’ cross-border businesses.

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