MYbank, the digital bank under Ant Group (formely known as Ant Financial) which is part of the Alibaba Group, today announced a five-year plan to reach more small and micro enterprises (SMEs) across China via supply chain finance and rural lending. The five-year plan details MYbank’s aspirations to work with partners across multiple sectors to better serve SMEs across China.
Key measures and initiatives MYbank will implement as part of the plan include — leveraging supply chain finance to support 10 million SMEs, working with 2,000 county and village managers for rural lending, collaborate with financial institution partners to distribute RMB 300 B interest-free business loan vouchers, and serving 40 million underbanked female business owners.
“Through this five-year plan, we look forward to working with more financial institution partners to realize our shared vision to make financial services more accessible for SMEs,”
said Xiaolong Jin, President of MYbank.
“In the past, SMEs had to go through a one-way application approval process when they came to us for lending services. By working with our partners and embedding our services seamlessly into use cases such as supply chain finance and rural lending, we hope to bring our services to SMEs across a wide spectrum of industries.”
Established on June 25, 2015, MYbank is one of the leading private online commercial banks in China focused on serving SMEs and farmers. It was the first bank in China to establish its core banking system entirely on the cloud without any physical branches.
Leveraging Ant Group’s AI, computing and risk management technologies, MYbank also pioneered the “310 model” for SME financing, which offers collateral-free business loans that take less than three minutes to apply for on a mobile phone, less than one second to approve, and requires zero human intervention. SMEs in China supported by the “310 model” have shown resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 98% of them repaying their loans on time.
According to data from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), SMEs account for over 90% of business entities in China and contribute to 80% of urban employment and 60% of Chinese GDP. As of June 2020, MYbank and its partners have served 29 million SMEs in China, including street vendors. Their average loan size is RMB 36,000 (approximately USD$5,000) and 80% of them had previously never received business loans from a bank.
Leveraging Ant Group’s blockchain technology, Log56.com, a Chinese logistics platform with 70,000 registered corporate users, has helped 200,000 truck drivers and micro logistics business owners successfully apply for loans from MYbank and its financial institutional partners. Ant’s blockchain technology helped to ensure key logistics information, such as order and execution numbers, are tamper-proof. This also reduced costs related to risk management and helped MYbank’s AI to calculate an accurate line of credit for SME operators on the platform.
