At the 2026 interim results conference held on August 28, ICBC Vice President Zhang Shouchuan detailed the bank's lending and investment activities for the first half of the year. He stated that during this period, ICBC diligently implemented national macroeconomic and financial policies, alongside counter-cyclical and cross-cyclical adjustment measures. The bank proactively addressed the financing needs of the real economy, strategically front-loading and precisely targeting its efforts to support employment stability, business operations, market confidence, and overall expectations.

Looking ahead, Zhang outlined the bank's next steps, noting, "We will proactively execute all existing and incremental national policies. Our focus will be on major national strategies, key sectors, and weak links, while strengthening precise engagement with high-quality corporate projects. Through high-quality investment and lending services, we aim to contribute to high-quality economic and social development. Concurrently, we are deepening innovation in retail products and enhancing our digital financial service capabilities to help stimulate consumer potential."

In the realm of technology finance, Zhang emphasized ICBC's strong commitment. The bank is continuously refining its "Five Specializations" service mechanism, which includes specialized institutions, dedicated initiatives, tailored products, focused risk control, and exclusive support. This approach positions ICBC as a leading bank in effectively advancing the technology finance agenda.

Zhang highlighted three key areas of focus. First, the bank is fully committed to serving national strategies to bolster high-level scientific and technological self-reliance. This involves proactively supporting the three major international science and technology innovation centers, strengthening industry research, product innovation, and marketing services around emerging pillar industries, and continually enhancing its capability to identify and select technology sectors. ICBC aims to deeply engage with the national major science and technology research system and actively support innovation and R&D activities.

Second, ICBC is driving the integrated development of technology and manufacturing finance to support the modernization of the industrial system. By leveraging its group synergies and focusing on the manufacturing sector, the bank is facilitating the deep integration of technological and industrial innovation. This includes optimizing credit supply and advancing credit product innovation, with a portfolio of high-quality products such as R&D loans, innovation easy loans, base credit loans, and special loans for disruptive technological innovation. As a result, the bank's technology loan scale maintains a leading position in the market.

Third, the bank is comprehensively enhancing its digital risk control and service capabilities. This involves improving the identification of corporate technological capabilities and refining a new evaluation model for technology enterprises based on technology innovation indicators, investment and financing behavior metrics, and operational growth criteria. By leveraging big data and artificial intelligence technologies for intelligent evaluation of tech enterprises, ICBC ensures a balance between risk and return, using smart finance to serve hard technology sectors.