OREANDA-NEWS. December 30, 2014. Influenced by recent price fluctuations of international crude oil, interest in ICBC’s account-based crude oil investment has continued to rise, resulting in a significant increase of new accounts and trading volume.

Since October, monthly trading volume of paper crude oil has jumped by 500% compared to the previous months by average and the maximum daily trading volume hit 547,000 buckets.

An official with ICBC said ICBC took the lead among peers to introduce paper crude oil. With this new type of investment product, customers, by dealing in tranches instead of taking crude oil in kind, can conduct crude oil deals in RMB or USD to gain from price differences. Since its launch in March 2013, this product has received extensive attention from the market and customers, and has become a new choice for retail customers to diversify assets. In addition, the crude oil price is correlated to the price of gasoline and diesel that are daily consumption products.

Personal trading of account-based crude oil may hedge against risks arising from price fluctuation of crude oil and relevant commodities to some extent. Meanwhile, to better meet the investment demands of customers, ICBC has strengthened innovation and successively introduced rollover of account-based international crude oil and account-based crude oil. In July this year, the Bank promoted “short selling” of account-based crude oil (selling before buying) nationwide, which further enriched the diversity and trading functions of account-based crude oil.

As of now, ICBC has realized full coverage of account-based trading products in terms of variety and function, and maintained a leading position among peers. In addition to account-based crude oil, the Bank has also been engaged in account-based Precious Metals and account-based FX. For the next step, it will introduce such innovative products as account base metal and account-based agricultural products, to offer better products and services to investors.