Customer Responsibility: Building Confidence in Our Brand
We regard the CITIC brand and its promise of ‘delivering the best services to customers’ as the key to our success as a business. We live by this promise every day in our dealings with customers and make every effort to provide them with the safe, high quality products and services they have come to depend on.
Performance
Delivering Quality Products and Services
In line with our customer-centric principles, we remain firmly committed to product quality control and the highest standard of customer service.
Continue to innovate new products
- CITIC-Prudential stepped up its effort to develop new products in health and wealth management. In 2018, CITIC-Prudential launched over 40 new products in response to customer needs for insurance covering critical illness, children’s education and cancer risk in elderly people, all of which achieved satisfactory sales. CITIC-Prudential offers 20% extra compensation to cancer with the highest morbidity to better finance their treatment; it promptly offered insurance coverage on targeted therapy drugs. The Company also led the industry in mainland China by introducing multi- pay cancer insurance, as the disease has a high relapse and metastasis rate.
- As a pioneer of socially responsible finance, CITIC Trust launched its Investment + Poverty Alleviation programme that allows investors to participate in charitable activities. These include the CITIC Trust GHF Poverty Alleviation Trust, which was well accepted by investors and fully subscribed upon release. The enthusiastic response to the programme gives investors exposure to charitable investments and helps to improve CITIC Trust’s image as a socially-responsible company that cares for the welfare of the community.
Products that meet the needs of customers and society
- CITIC-Prudential is committed to offering customer-friendly services and products. To reduce cumbersome application procedures for the bereaved and to ease the insurance contract take- over process, CITIC-prudential began offering a new feature in July 2017 that allows a second policy holder to continue enjoying coverage if the primary policy holder passes away. A total of 6,554 policy holders have taken advantage of this feature since it was launched in July 2017.
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CITIC Pacific Special Steel set up a new system to collect and analyse orders, delivery condition, procurement volume, quality claims, change in demand and other information by each customer so that the appropriate improvement measures can be taken.
Case study CITIC Construction Signature Projects
CITIC Construction has implemented a range of local signature projects that have helped to improve its brand image. These projects have earned widespread public and government praise as well as several awards in the countries where CITIC Construction operates.
Geely automobile factory, Belarus
The Geely automobile factory in Belarus passed the inspection of the National Acceptance Committee during the year. Following this committees’ endorsement, the Geely factory has been producing 60,000 passenger cars per year and has become the first independent automobile assembly plant in Belarus.
The West Bid Section of the Algerian East-west Expressway
This project was completed successfully in 2018 and won the 15th Tien-yow Jeme Civil Engineering Prize for highway engineering projects, making it the fourth project by CITIC Construction to win this prize.
Desalination Plant Project, Venezuela
In 2018, this project was completed for handover and recognised for its quality standards and advanced technology. President Maduro of Venezuela visited the project site and officiated the handover ceremony for the plant.
Improving Customer Relationships
In addition to providing safe, stable, reliable products and services to our customers, we are committed to protecting basic consumer rights. To improve customer satisfaction, we continued to provide industry news and education on the rights of customers during the year.
Protecting Customers’ Rights
- From January 2018 to January 2019, CITIC Bank surveyed 8 departments at its head office and 24 of its branches for the 2018 CITIC Bank Consumer Rights Protection Audit Report. The report covered 48 issues concerning the protection of consumer rights and proposed four recommendations. The bank also trains and provides guidance on the protection of consumer rights. To date, 38 branches have organised more than 160 training sessions on consumer protection.
- To protect consumers’ data privacy, CITIC Securities introduced data masking, restricted the use of USB sticks to certain authorised departments and staff, and installed a monitoring system to prevent leaks of data and other sensitive information.
Enhancing customer service management
- In 2018, CITIC Securities established a comprehensive customer complaint management system, which clarified procedures for handling and resolving complaints from customers. Departments responsible for settling customer complaints were also advised on how to apply for mediation by the Securities and Futures Dispute Resolution Centre.
- CITIC Press established a customer service team for resolving customer issues via channels such as a customer service hotline. As a result of their efforts, customer satisfaction levels were 35% higher than CITIC Press’ peers. Additionally, CITIC Press regularly conducted customer service review and responds to customer feedback in order to improve service.
Case study : Financial Education for the Community
In 2018, the Group’s financial businesses carried out educational campaigns to arm consumers with the knowledge they need to reduce their investment risk and improve their ability to detect fraudulent financial activities.
In collaboration with the Securities Association of China and Shenzhen Securities Regulatory Bureau, CITIC Securities organised both online and offline financial education activities targeting market hotspot issues, issued risk warnings and provided information on long-term investing, value investments and rational investment. The company’s Shenzhen branches also held more than 10 educational activities for more than 270 elderly investors for their better choices of investment.
In January 2018, China Security established China’s only national investor education centre in Beijing focusing on securities and futures contracts. It cooperated with over 10 universities and middle schools and hosted over 8,300 visits from students in 2018 in Beijing to inform them in the form of seminars with knowledges in security history, security investment and risk prevention.
In May 2018, CITIC-Prudential Guangdong Branch joined Junior Achievement, the world’s largest non- profit educational organisation, to host the 2018 JA Teaching Charity Activities. It organised lessons for primary students on Junior Financial Management, an elective course for grade-four students.
Industrial Responsibility: Working with Partners for Mutual Development