Mindful of their crucial role in the advance of an enterprise, Chinese banks are increasing their innovative financial offerings to companies that are reliant on technology or are advanced in this area already. This is in keeping with the country’s ambitions of development excellence.
It’s already happening as efforts in that direction are intensifying already. For instance, one bank in its Jiangsu Branch extended a 154 million yuan (US$24.22 million) loan to a major lithium mining company. It was meant for a new lithium battery project.
It must be noted that these Chinese banks are keen on the technological project of the company applying for a loan. Finding their new project viable, the bank granted the lithium company a loan after assessing the company’s innovation capacity. To note, the debtor was a state-owned enterprise specialising in the research, development and production of lithium batteries, and battery management systems.
Taking the cue, many banks are extending services tailor-fit for technological companies. Another state-owned commercial lender launched a bank-wide promotion for an innovation capacity evaluation system for tech companies. By adopting the new system, the bank is able to turn the level of a company’s technological development into a key factor for the bank’s credit-granting decisions.
This system helps small and medium-sized tech companies to overcome difficulties in obtaining bank loans solely via the analysis of their financial indicators. Plus, it uses technology to finetune its search for tech companies to help.
To start, the bank has gained access to the lists of more than 10 types of tech companies issued by different government ministries and over 16 million records of information on intellectual property rights.
As a result, its new system now covers 277,000 national-level high-tech and new technology enterprises. To automatically generate evaluations on the innovation capacity of companies based on their intellectual property rights the bank uses:
- Big Data
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) assisted decision-making
- Data visualisation
- A series of quantitative indicators
For their part, tech clients can check evaluation results on the bank’s desktops, mobile app or via social media. For companies with strong innovation capabilities and good market potential, the bank will adopt different credit enhancement measures and accord high priority to their loan applications.
There’s more. A Beijing-based national joint-stock commercial lender, recently launched an online unsecured loan product－which does not require any type of collateral－for innovative tech companies. These loans are extended based on the creditworthiness of applicants. The maximum loan amount is 10 million yuan (US$ 1,577,287) per borrower and the loan tenure is no longer than one year.
Plus, it has also joined hands with other types of financial institutions in offering technologically advanced companies a series of products and services. Among these are loans, transaction banking, equity incentives, IPO-related services and refinancing through capital markets. In addition, it has launched multiple products for growth-stage tech companies.
Indeed, catering to technology companies has become sort of a trend for Chinese banks. That kind of support is timely. It shows just how frenetic the activity is on the mainland when it comes to technological advancement.
The results have become obvious. To date, China’s digital transformation is nothing less of being considered massive. For instance, the country just had its fifth 5G operator running in full steam this year. It should cater to the masses in a few months’ time.
It’s a wonder. The world stands witness to how much digital adoption can change lives. Not only did China debut its digital currency during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, but innovation was on full display with assistive technologies showing how far ICT can take us, as reported on OpenGov Asia.
