Fintech helps lenders aid small biz in 2 provinces

A total of 199 banks that settled down on the platform extended credit of over 360 billion yuan, of which 93.3 percent was in the form of inclusive loans to small businesses.

More than 26 percent of the loans were non-collateralized, and 17.2 percent of the borrowers have never received bank loans before, he said.

By the end of 2020, China's outstanding balance of inclusive loans to micro and small businesses was 15.3 trillion yuan, up more than 30 percent year-on-year, said Guo Shuqing, chairman of CBIRC.

The banking and insurance regulator will improve mechanisms so that the financial sector will be able to support key areas, including self-reliance in science and technology, in a more precisely targeted manner, Guo said on March 2.

In Anhui province, the regulator encouraged banks to set up teams and institutions specializing in lending to technology companies.

"We estimate that the growth rate of our provincial banking sector's loans to tech companies and strategic emerging industries will be more than 5 percentage points higher than the average growth rate of loans in various forms province-wide this year," said Zhou Jialong, head of CBIRC's Anhui office.

Anhui aims to build influential emerging industry clusters with a focus on 10 major emerging industries like new-mode displays, integrated circuits, new energy vehicles and artificial intelligence.

"On the one hand, we optimized the structure of funds by giving support to core enterprises in supply chains. On the other hand, based on core enterprises, we endeavored to drive the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises in upstream and downstream segments of supply chains," Zhou said.

The Anhui office of the CBIRC urged national banking and insurance institutions to take advantage of their parent group's capability to offer a portfolio of financial services like lending, bond underwriting, wealth management and investment banking.

It also encouraged banks to set up branches specializing in lending to sci-tech innovation companies and establish specially designed assessment and review mechanisms in this field.

"Various banking and insurance institutions (in Anhui) are now taking the provision of financial services to sci-tech innovation companies as a focus of their own strategy transition. In the context of this kind of financial services, they have moved from the exploration stage to the full promotion stage," he said.