|
Consistent use of financial technologies has helped China's banks in
Zhejiang and Anhui provinces to lower the costs of loans extended to a
greater number of small businesses, thus helping them to tide over
financial difficulties, industry insiders said. Besides, fintech helped banks to increase lending to technology companies and strategic emerging industries. The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission's Zhejiang
office led banking and insurance institutions to help small businesses
overcome financing difficulties, thereby stabilizing the financial
sector and employment levels. By the end of February, there were 2.54 million registered micro and
small businesses in Zhejiang province, accounting for 88.1 percent of
all its registered companies. In addition, there were 5.13 million individually-owned family
businesses, which are also key target small business clients of banking
and insurance institutions. Bao Zuming, head of CBIRC's Zhejiang office, said the regulator
helped improve loan access to small businesses and brought about a
remarkable decline in comprehensive financing costs in the province. As of the end of February, the provincial banking sector's
outstanding balance of inclusive loans to micro and small
businesses－that is to say, loans to small businesses whose total credit
lines are up to 10 million yuan ($1.53 million) per borrower－was 2.2
trillion yuan. There were 5.3 million small-business borrowers in Zhejiang province,
up by 154,000 from the beginning of this year. The interest rate on
inclusive loans given to small businesses was 5.62 percent, down 0.21
percentage point from the start of this year, the local office of CBIRC
said. To solve information asymmetry between financial institutions and
small businesses, Zhejiang launched an online platform for comprehensive
financial services. The platform gathered a large amount of data from a number of
provincial government departments. Using big data and other
technologies, banks operating in the province increased collateral-free
loans, a financial innovation. The value of transactions on the platform until now has exceeded 1.3
trillion yuan, and data queries surpassed 52 million, benefiting more
than 1.08 million enterprises, Bao said at a news conference last week. With the help of the platform, client managers' workload of pre-loan
investigation was reduced by at least one-third. For 90 percent of the
loans offered through the platform, banks completed the credit granting
procedure within three days.
| 
Related News
