Shanghai Pudong Development Bank
Shanghai Pudong Development Bank has established itself as a leader in the domestic retail gold market by virtue of its effective marketing strategy, outstanding education programmes and investment advisory services, even though it is a much smaller bank than the state-owned Chinese commercial banks by assets.
Unlike its state-owned peers, SPDB, whose vice-president is Pan Weidong, does not have a sprawling network of bricks-and-mortar
outlets across China. Instead, the bank is successfully attracting customers to the retail gold market through instant messaging services such as QQ and WeChat, and by opening online gold shops with e-commerce firms such as JD.com and Alibaba’s Tmall. From market research, SPDB discovered that many retail investors shunned the gold market because of a lack of understanding of its workings, so the bank has led both online and offline educational programmes to teach potential customers about the opportunities and risks involved in gold investment and trading.
When it comes to serving retail gold clients, SPDB also excels in providing comprehensive investment advisory services and technical support for gold trading. The bank publishes its analyses of the gold market and recommends investment strategies for retail clients, in both cases via its public WeChat account – something it has done for more than seven years.
It has invested heavily in developing trading software to enable customers to invest in the gold market through digital channels, and it continuously upgrades its gold-trading platforms.
All these efforts have paid off. SPDB has maintained its position as the leading Chinese bank trading gold for retail clients in recent years.
In the last three years, its turnover for retail customers trading gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange has surged: in 2018, turnover jumped 79%, year on year, to exceed Rmb533 billion ($77 billion).