Milestones since then include the completion of its first bond issue, worth $90 million, the commencement of home loan lending and the development of a new capital transfer product used by migrants for investment immigration purposes in New Zealand.
The bank, which employs 33 staff here, had total assets of $323.7 million at the end of September, including total loans and advances of $291 million.
It now has more than 70 customers, ranging from large corporates to small and medium enterprises and individuals from the local Chinese community.
"We have significant, top-tier New Zealand corporates as customers today," says Shipley, who declined to name the firms. "They are names that are highly recognisable across a broad sector."
She says many of the bank's Kiwi clients were not doing business in the Chinese market.
"A lot of people assume that the Chinese banks [in New Zealand] are supporting Chinese enterprise," Shipley says. "Our institutional banking now has a very strong profile of supporting New Zealand businesses, and many of them have nothing to do with Chinese trade."
Facilitating two-way trade between this country and China, which exceeded $20 billion last year, is an area in which the bank is looking to grow its presence over the next 12 months.
In the trading piece we've got plenty of capacity to expand and we're pleased to support either small or large entities going both ways -- Chinese businesses doing trade in New Zealand or vice versa.
"I suspect that will be the subject of significant growth next year."
CCB NZ has provided home loans to more than 30 customers since May.
Shipley says the bank's mortgage borrowers in this country are mostly Chinese residents, who had knowledge of the brand from back home.
"We've been able to recruit some very good, Mandarin-speaking New Zealand-based Chinese staff from our competitors and they are proving to be a very powerful."
The company doesn't operate any retail branches in New Zealand and doesn't have plans to open any in the near term.
Shipley says the bank does a lot of marketing through Chinese social media and New Zealand's biggest Chinese website, Skykiwi.
Its Enjoy NZ QDII product allows clients to transfer cash to New Zealand from China -- where strict capital controls remain in place.
By September, more than $12 million had been transferred for nine clients, who used the funds to purchase CCB New Zealand bonds for investment immigration purposes, the bank said.
Enjoy NZ QDII is recognised by Immigration New Zealand.
CCB, which has 15,000 branches and close to 300 million customers in China, including three million corporate clients, gained clearance from the Reserve Bank to operate in this country last July.
Shipley says the bank is now looking to secure a branch licence, which would support growth through providing greater access to its Chinese parent's balance sheet.
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China's largest bank, and Bank of China have also established a presence in New Zealand -- China Construction Bank marks its first year operating in New Zealand as part of a wider international expansion by that country's banking sector.
But concerns have been raised about the impact China's economic slowdown may have on Chinese lenders.
The biggest signal will be when the Shanghai exchange can be freely invested on a global basis.
In September, ratings agency Standard & Poors said it had revised to negative from stable its assessment of the risks facing China's banking industry due to the potential for a rise in bad debts and problems in the real estate sector.
"We view economic risks for China's banking industry as high," Standard & Poors said in a report, which followed the turmoil that enveloped China's stock markets in August, sparking financial volatility around the world.
Shipley, however, remains bullish about the outlook for China's economy and says she isn't concerned about CCB pulling back on its international expansion if the situation worsens.
"I've heard people predicting a hard landing in China probably since I was involved in the late 1990s around the Asian Crisis," she says.
Shipley sat on the board of CCB NZ's Beijing-based parent for six years before retiring in 2013, when she was replaced by former ANZ New Zealand boss Murray Horn.
She says there will be "bumps" along the road as the Chinese Government pushes to transform its economy away from industrial and investment-led growth to domestic consumption, but there will be no hard landing.
China's growth rate dipped below 7 per cent earlier this year, according to official figures, but many economists think the actual rate could be much lower.
Shipley compares the transition taking place in China today to the economic reforms that took place in New Zealand during the 1980s and early 1990s.
"I can remember holding my breath, literally, when we opened up particular controls, disestablished industries and removed tariffs," she says.
Meanwhile, Shipley says she expects the relaxation of China's capital controls to be a gradual process.
"It won't be rapid," she says.
"The biggest signal will be when the Shanghai exchange can be freely invested on a global basis."
Should New Zealanders be concerned about a wall of Chinese cash finding its way into New Zealand investments such as residential property and farmland?
"I think the trick still is to not be afraid of a wall of anything," Shipley says.
"I'm very much a supporter of direct foreign investment both ways. We are a very capital-constrained country -- that's always been true. "
She reckons xenophobia is abating in New Zealand.
"There are massive numbers of New Zealanders whose children are going to school beside children [from different ethnic backgrounds] who they love and care for," Shipley says. "One of the things I observe in children is that they are both colour blind and race blind, thank goodness."
