Sberbank to finance letters of credit with Harbin Bank of China
The agreement with Harbin Bank will enable the bank to offer its customers more convenient services along with better and more flexible financing terms when dealing with import letters of credit.
Sberbank Rossii PAO (MCX:SBER) has entered into an agreement to finance letters of credit with Harbin Bank, one of the largest regional banks in China.
The building up of the network of financing banks and increasing the lending limits are due to a growing LOC volume between Sberbank customers and counterparties in China. The agreement with Harbin Bank is set to enable the bank to offer its customers even more convenient services along with better and more flexible financing terms when dealing with import letters of credit.
Evgeny Kravchenko, Head of Trade Finance at Sberbank, commented:
“Sberbank has been working with Harbin Bank since 2014. It’s one of the first Chinese banks we started doing business with across trade finance services in national currencies. In 2015, Sberbank and Harbin Bank led the initiative to establish the Russian-Chinese Finance Council.”
Wang Tao, Assistant to President at Harbin Bank, added:
“Sberbank is one of the most important strategic partners of Harbin Bank. In recent years, the parties’ cooperation has reached lofty heights in settlements denominated in Russian and Chinese national currencies, interbank lending for trade finance, etc. We hope that such verticals as banknote operations, cooperation on global markets and capital markets will help contribute much to the multilateral development of the Russian-Chinese financial cooperation down the road, in part thanks to the Russian-Chinese Financial Council.”
Harbin Bank was established in February 1997. With its headquarters in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, the bank operates via 17 branches in the largest Chinese cities.