Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd, the biggest bank in the world by asset value, said on Tuesday that its noble metal trade volume exceeded 1 trillion yuan ($164.3 billion) in the first three quarters, achieving the best performance in four years.

Transactions of noble metal, resistant to corrosion and oxidation, increased 22 percent over the same period last year at 110,000 tons, according to a bank press release.

The bank has enhanced noble metal services in trade, financing, wealth management and direct sales to widen its service network and fulfill customer needs, a spokesman said.

He added that its gold-based core product for noble metals has received a positive response from the market. The product allows customers to purchase gold-based asset equities at small volumes in a certain span of time, which could be converted to noble metals, to mitigate the risks of one-off large investment.

The transaction scale of the product is over 100 tons, 17 times the volume last year.

According to the bank earlier this year, its noble metal transaction in the first half of the year was close to 700 billion yuan, placing the third-quarter volume at more than 370 billion yuan.