CITIC Bank has been recognized with the "Excellent Case in Banking Consumer Protection" award at the 2026 Golden Stone Awards, organized by Sina Finance. The bank stood out among numerous financial institutions for its initiative titled "Deeply Practicing 'Finance for the People,' Creating a Warm Financial Service Experience through a 'Four Special' Business Process."
The following is a summary of the awarded case: Amid rapid advancements in financial technology, customer demand for convenient service has intensified. Concurrently, new forms of telecom and online fraud, such as AI face-swapping, have emerged continuously, creating a challenging anti-fraud landscape. This dual pressure on risk management and service efficiency presents a critical challenge for commercial banks: how to ensure both customer fund security and service convenience. In 2025, CITIC Bank addressed this by focusing on urgent, difficult, and pressing financial service needs. It developed specialized guidelines to optimize its "Four Special" service process, catering to special periods, special customers, special businesses, and special scenarios. This approach specifically assists customers who cannot visit branches due to mobility issues, being overseas, or impaired consciousness. While strictly adhering to security and compliance standards, the bank offers tailored solutions through home visits, video verification, and cross-departmental coordination. This ensures service needs and risk control requirements are met simultaneously, significantly enhancing convenience and safeguarding customer funds, thereby delivering warmer financial services.
First, the bank resolves customer difficulties by providing convenient "Home Visit" financial services. For scenarios involving elderly or special needs customers who are unable to visit a branch due to mobility constraints, CITIC Bank has established clear procedures covering preliminary preparation, dual-person home verification, counter processing, and document retention. It has refined processes for customer authorization and verifying customer intent during visits. In practice, some elderly customers are advanced in age with limited mobility, and their often-busy children cannot easily assist with banking tasks, leading to unmet service needs. For such situations, customers can schedule appointments in advance for home visits, during which anti-fraud education is also conducted.
Second, the bank addresses customer pain points by offering efficient "Online Processing" financial services. For instances where customers cannot visit a branch—such as being abroad—and bank staff cannot perform a home verification, CITIC Bank has implemented procedures for video verification of customer authorization. This provides an efficient remote service option. When customers overseas urgently need to authorize someone to handle domestic banking affairs, the bank uses video calls to verify the authorizer's intent, authenticate the representative's identity, and facilitate online signing of authorization documents. This ensures thorough customer identification and verification of the agency relationship, enabling fast and secure financial services while confirming the customer's genuine intent.
Third, the bank meets urgent needs by delivering agile "Emergency Fund" financial services. For situations where a customer is unconscious and requires urgent payment for medical expenses, CITIC Bank has defined processes involving dual-person visits to hospitals to verify the customer's status and confirm guardianship. This allows for the emergency provision of "life-saving funds" while prioritizing fund security. According to civil code regulations, unconsciousness requires a court declaration and proof of guardianship. However, families often struggle to obtain these documents quickly during emergencies. To address urgent financial needs while ensuring security, CITIC Bank has detailed应急 procedures for confirming the customer's condition with hospitals, verifying medical costs, and ensuring funds are used exclusively for their intended purpose, guaranteeing timely medical treatment.
In terms of outcomes, CITIC Bank's "Four Special" service model has accumulated numerous successful cases across its network. Service response times have been shortened, and processing efficiency has improved significantly, earning high customer satisfaction. Related cases have been widely covered by major media outlets, reaching an audience of 21.86 million. This model offers a new perspective on financial services, effectively addressing urgent and complex customer needs while adhering to a "risk-control-first" principle. It maximizes the provision of more convenient and secure financial services for the public without compromising fund safety.
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