ISO 37301 compliance management system certification

On October 31, BSI held the ISO 37301 certification award ceremony of ICBC compliance management system in Beijing. Representatives of BSI and ICBC overseas institutions in Hong Kong, New York, London, and Dubai participated in and witnessed this grand ceremony online. ICBC head office and its four overseas institutions have been awarded the ISO 37301 compliance management system (CMS) certification issued by BSI. This is the first such certification issued by BSI for the financial industry in China as well as in the world.

As the international business environment is undergoing unprecedented changes in a century and the global economy, trade and various cooperative relations get more complex and changeable, "compliance" has become an important issue in the supervision and management of major economies, industries and enterprises.

As a technical partner of the WTO, ISO strives to promote the standardization of consistent CMS worldwide. Under the ISO framework, BSI has worked closely with global experts, including those in the China National Institute of Standardization, to establish the technical committee of ISO/TC 309 governance of organizations in 2016, and serves as the secretariat. It has promoted the establishment and development of a series of relevant standards, such as ISO 37000 for the governance of organizations, ISO 37301 for compliance management systems, and ISO 37001 for anti-bribery management systems, as well as their global application and good practice.

Since its promulgation release in April 2021, the ISO 37301 CMS standard has received extensive attention both in China and internationally as it not only provides a systematic method for enterprises to standardize and strengthen their own compliance management, but also serves as a reference for regulatory and judicial bodies to review organizations' compliance rectification plans and compliance management system practices. Also, as the first international CMS standard for conformity assessment, it has far-reaching significance for the promotion of the development of global compliance management. In October 2022, China adopted by equation ISO 37301 as a national recommended standard (GB/T 35770).

This ISO 37301 certification of ICBC's overseas compliance management system (OCM) took nearly three months since the beginning of July 2022. It targets the relevant compliance management activities of ICBC head office and four overseas institutions, including ICBC (Asia), ICBC (USA), ICBC (London) and ICBC Dubai (DIFC) Branch, covering eight compliance areas such as anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing, and 10 business areas such as corporate finance. Moreover, this certification enabled BSI to witness the outstanding performance of ICBC in the CMS construction as a leader in the financial industry, provided an application practice and global audit example of benchmarking the new version of CMS standard for the certification industry, and laid a good foundation for enterprises and public institutions in different industries to apply for ISO 37301: 2021 CMS standard certification and audit implementation.

Wu Xiangjiang, General Manager of the Internal Control and Compliance Department of ICBC Head Office, said: "This successful ISO 37301:2021 certification of ICBC OCM is a milestone event in ICBC's international operation. It marks a new step in ICBC's overseas compliance management. It also indicates that ICBC OCM has reached the international standard level, and has laid a solid foundation for the construction of a proactive, forward-looking, comprehensive and effective group compliance management system (GCM). In the next step, guided by the strategic planning and international development strategy for the 14th five-year plan period, ICBC will further strengthen the construction of a long-term mechanism for overseas compliance management, improve the level of compliance risk control, hold the bottom line of no major compliance risk events, and consolidate the industry image of operating in accordance with the law. ICBC will also further strive to be the best practice in the industry. From an industry follower to a contributor to a leader, it will make continuous efforts to establish itself as an industry benchmark and make itself better known to the world.

Mr. Michael Lam, Managing Director of BSI APAC, expressed his gratitude to ICBC for its trust in BSI. It requires the close cooperation of a large number of personnel from all departments to establish and certify a compliance management system. BSI's team of auditing services was deeply impressed by ICBC's organizational structure of compliance governance, system planning and operation control, as well as the "compliance-oriented, responsible, risk-controlled, steady and efficient" compliance culture, compliance informatization construction, and compliance performance management.

Frank Zhang, Managing Director of BSI Greater China, said: "As the world's first financial institution to benchmark against ISO 37301, ICBC's initiative to embrace international standards demonstrates the great importance that the management of the head office and branches attach to the improvement of their own compliance management and their determination to be follow up with the international standards. It also shows the foresight and international vision of the leadership at all levels, further conveys the enterprising and innovative spirit of ICBC, and ensures that ICBC will continue to be a new model among its peers in social services, pursuit of excellence, and innovative development. In this cooperation with ICBC, the two institutions have worked together to understand and learn from each, and reached a good consensus on the application of standards for both local teams and overseas international teams. This is an innovative breakthrough and milestone event in the application of international standards for both the financial industry and standard certification bodies.

Founded in 1901, BSI is the world’s first National Standards Body and a renowned large-scale international certification and training institution. BSI will further deepen its investment in standard R&D development, training certification and third-party audit to provide certification assurance solutions covering product liability, consumer protection, information security, privacy security, as well as ESG- and sustainability-related solutions including green finance and low-carbon development. Moreover, it will continue to build a stronger communication platform for Chinese enterprises to go global and their international development and bring into play BSI's basic belief of "standards deliver good practice and standards come from enterprises and go to enterprises" to promote the international operation of Chinese enterprises.