The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has agreed to a cross-border referral deal with ‘big four’ Chinese bank Agricultural Bank of China in hopes of drawing more customers.

The agreement, the first of its kind between a big four Chinese and Australian bank, will see CBA take student and migrant flows and cross-border referrals between China and Australia from ABC, the CBA announced in Beijing Tuesday.

Lyn McGrath, executive general manager for retail sales, said ABC will be able to offer its clients living in Australia the option to establish an Australian transaction account via CBA’s International Customer Service group, based in Shanghai and Sydney.

“It’s a win-win relationship. For ABC it offers value-added service for their clients and promotes its one-stop banking service, and for CBA it captures the customer flows and provides new arrival banking needs by using its Australian branch network and ICS service,” McGrath said.

This year Chinese migrants top Britons for first time with 29,547 migrants, representing 17.5 percent of the total Australian migration program in the year to June 30. In addition, there are approximately 30,000 Chinese students set to depart China to study in Australia.

Commonwealth Bank’s ICS team offers multilingual 24/7 banking services in English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Indonesian Bahasa, Vietnamese, Hindi and Korean.