21st Century Business Herald Chen Zhi Shanghai Report Since the beginning of this year, more and more Internet financial technology platforms have successively laid out the credit business of small and micro enterprises.
"The reason is that we find that the proportion of small and micro enterprise customers is getting higher and higher, and small and micro customers are contributing more and more to the business, such as the small and micro customer group of our platform accounts for about 30%, but contributes more than 60% of the loan business transaction volume; the second is that the relevant state departments have introduced a number of measures to actively support the development of small and micro enterprises, so that many banks have increased the amount of credit for small and micro business, if the financial technology platform can connect more bank credit funds through customer acquisition, risk control assistance and other advantages, it will undoubtedly drive the business to develop more rapidly." Zhao Cheng (pseudonym), director of operations of a financial technology platform, pointed out to reporters.
The reporter learned from many parties that in order to actively expand the credit business of small and micro enterprises, some financial technology platforms have developed special credit products such as personal industrial and commercial loans, bill loans, tax loans, and tobacco license loans, and actively laid out small and micro market segments.
However, how to make small and micro businesses bigger and stronger has become a new challenge for them.
Zhao Cheng told reporters bluntly that at present, their layout of small and micro businesses relies heavily on their own customer group stratification and scene services, but this leads to the growth of small and micro customers that easily touch the "ceiling"; at the same time, their risk control judgment of small and micro enterprises relies heavily on their past repayment records, lack of upstream and downstream capital turnover in the industrial chain and more comprehensive tax/financial data, so that they are less afraid to set foot in new small and micro market segments.
"What bothers us even more is that as more and more financial institutions get involved in small and micro business, the online customer acquisition cost of small and micro enterprises has risen by more than 2-3 times in the past year or so, resulting in the rigid cost of small and micro loan business continuing to rise, if it is impossible to reduce customer acquisition costs and improve risk control efficiency through the scale effect, business development will face great constraints." He sighed.
In order to continuously enhance the competitiveness of small and micro businesses, more and more financial technology platforms have opened a business cooperation model. Recently, 360 Digital and Kingdee Financial reached a strategic cooperation to further broaden the boundaries of small and micro business cooperation through the in-depth combination of technology, capital, channels, customer resources and other fields, and help more "specialized and new" enterprises grow.
Wang Hong, president of Kingdee Financial, said that the development of "specialized and specialized" enterprises is highly dependent on the maturity of industrial interconnection, but due to the complexity of the industrial value chain and the long chain, the current digital financial services for these specialized and new small and micro enterprises are far from reaching the level of digital financial intelligence and convenience at the 2C end. Therefore, to make the financial technology platform bigger and stronger, small and micro businesses, it must stand in the perspective of expanding industrial Internet finance, integrate the advantages of data, scenarios, risk control, capital docking and other aspects of all parties, and strive to solve the problem of financing difficulties and expensive financing for specialized new small and micro enterprises. Kingdee Financial hopes to join hands with 360 Digital to become a pathfinder in the field of small and micro services.
In the view of many people in the financial technology industry, the key to cracking the bottleneck of small and micro business development lies in solving the "impossible triangle" problem. The so-called "impossible triangle", that is, it is difficult for small and micro credit business to form an effective balance between scale, quality and cost. In the past, many financial institutions emphasized reducing costs and increasing scale in small and micro business, but they could not control the quality of credit, resulting in an increase in the bad debt rate; some financial institutions emphasized that both small and micro scale and credit quality increased (the bad debt rate was lower), and they faced the dilemma that operating costs could not be reduced.
"The rise of fintechs such as API technology, Internet operations, and big data risk control may enable small and micro credit to find the best balance between scale, quality and cost, and finally crack the impossible triangle." Zhao Cheng pointed out.
Lu Yao, general manager of the small and micro finance department of 360 Digital, pointed out to reporters that the cooperation between 360 Digital and Kingdee Financial is not a simple business superposition, but an attempt to link the risk control of the former with the bank's credit funding ability, and the latter's data and scene capabilities are effectively integrated, further improving the credit transaction matching degree between banks and small and micro enterprises, achieving a win-win situation for all parties, on the one hand, so that the credit needs of small and micro enterprises can be met more quickly and efficiently, on the other hand, to help banks reduce the cost of small and micro business at the same time, Achieve both the improvement of credit scale and credit quality.
In her view, in the future, the development of China's small and micro credit market will show four major trends, namely retailing, scenario-based, diversification and refinement. In this development process, the information asymmetry that integrates the resources of all parties to open up data, scenarios, risk control capabilities and bank capital docking capabilities is particularly critical.
<h4>The "rapid progress" of small and micro businesses is difficult to hide the pain points</h4>
Since the beginning of this year, a major new development trend in the domestic financial technology market is that small and micro businesses have "grown by leaps and bounds".
In the first half of this year, the scale of the small and micro loan assistance business of 360 Digital Science reached 13.6 billion yuan, with an average amount exceeding 250,000 yuan; Lexin's small and micro credit loan business for small and medium-sized enterprise owners reached 4 billion yuan, nearly doubling from the first quarter; in the second quarter, about 77.6% of the new loans controlled by Lujin were invested in small and micro enterprises, higher than 72.6% in the same period of 2020.
The reason is that, first, as China's economic fundamentals continue to improve, coupled with the relevant departments to take a number of measures to support the development of small and micro enterprises, so that small and micro enterprises show a better development trend, attracting many financial technology platforms to accelerate the pace of small and micro business layout, and second, the competition in the personal consumer credit market is becoming increasingly fierce, forcing financial technology platforms to find new blue ocean markets.
"We did a survey of user portraits of small and micro customer groups and found a lot of interesting phenomena." The head of the small and micro business department of a financial technology platform revealed to reporters that first of all, the financial strength of small and micro customers is generally not high, and the proportion of small and micro users with a registered capital of less than 5 million is more than 70%; secondly, the customer base is highly dispersed, mainly based on convenience store self-employed households, mom-and-pop stores, small wholesalers, and small logistics and transportation enterprises, and the average loan amount is less than 300,000 yuan; third, the proportion of female entrepreneurs has increased significantly, and the proportion of female borrowers in small and micro customers is about 25%-30%; fourth, about 70% Small and micro business owners applying for credit have no credit history at banks before.
"In addition, we also found through the big data risk control model that if the repayment ability assessment parameters of personal consumer credit are transplanted to the stability and business growth assessment level of small and micro enterprises, we will find that the credit risk assessment of the latter has become easier, because many individuals' consumer credit needs are mainly used for the capital turnover needs of mom-and-pop stores/convenience stores." He revealed. Therefore, on the one hand, his financial technology platform has increased credit support for female entrepreneurs and first-mortgage small and micro customers, and basically controlled the credit scale within 300,000; on the other hand, many personal consumer credit risk control models have been transplanted to the risk assessment link of small and micro customers to further improve the accuracy of risk control.
In the view of many fintech industry insiders, although many fintech platforms are scrambling to lay out small and micro businesses, it is not easy to resolve many pain points of small and micro credit.
First of all, the cost of customer acquisition of small and micro business remains high, and even as more and more financial institutions provide online small and micro credit services in recent years, the online customer acquisition cost of small and micro business has increased by 2-3 times in the past year or so;
Secondly, the risk control of small and micro businesses is still quite difficult. At present, banks mainly use small and micro enterprise industrial and commercial data, tax data, financial data, upstream and downstream capital turnover data as the main basis for issuing credit loans, but this may not be able to effectively curb some moral hazard and fraud risks, such as the financial technology platform through the interpersonal relationship chart of small and micro business owners found that some small and micro enterprises will invest in private lending, resulting in a sharp increase in credit risk.
Third, in terms of small and micro service experience, many small and micro enterprises and self-employed households complain that there are pain points such as too much input, long waiting time, and many doubts in the online loan application process, and these pain points have not been effectively solved.
"More importantly, some small and micro enterprises simply do not know how to convert the past business flow data into their own credit data, as an important auxiliary tool to expand credit financing channels and improve the efficiency of credit approval." Zhao Cheng pointed out.
In his view, this is also a major reason for the existence of an "impossible triangle" in the current small and micro business. Because banks cannot fully grasp all kinds of operational data of small and micro enterprises (or convert such operational data into standardized data to improve credit risk control efficiency), they either have to increase operating costs to solve the blindness of risk control, resulting in both business scale and credit quality, and operating costs are difficult to decline; or simply exclude these small and micro customer groups from the scope of credit services, so that operating costs and risk control pressures cannot be reduced at the same time, and scale growth cannot be formed.
"In fact, the advantages of fintech companies lie in two points, one is to reduce the cost of customer acquisition through business scale, and the other is to reduce operating costs and increase risk control efficiency through the computing power model. But to give full play to these two advantages, the key lies in solving the impossible triangle problem. Lu Yao said bluntly.
She said that in the short term, the vigorous development of small and micro businesses is mainly due to policy support, including relevant departments to encourage banks and other financial institutions to increase credit for small and micro businesses; but in the long run, the sustainable development of small and micro businesses is highly dependent on the progress of financial technology, that is, financial technology must solve two major problems, one is to assist banks and other financial institutions to fully and accurately identify various operational risks of small and micro enterprises, and guide them to "dare to lend, willing to lend, will lend, can lend" The second is to continue to improve the matching degree of credit transactions between financial institutions and small and micro enterprises, and greatly improve the operational efficiency of small and micro credit.
<h4>Revitalizing the credit assets of small and micro enterprises is "the first to bear the brunt"</h4>
In the view of Wang Hong, president of Kingdee Finance, to solve the "impossible triangle" problem of credit for small and micro enterprises, we must first fully revitalize the credit assets of small and micro enterprises.
Previously, he met a small and micro business owner involved in clothing design, and due to the epidemic, the payment collection cycle was lengthened, which made the company's operation difficult to circulate funds. Fortunately, Kingdee customer service reminds this small and micro business owner that he can convert the company's previous capital turnover record into a credit report through the credit module in kingdee financial cloud service, and then seek online credit from the bank. In the end, with the high credit data brought about by the good capital turnover in the past, the small and micro enterprise applied for an online credit loan of 1.5 million yuan within 2 hours, which solved the urgent need for capital turnover.
"This case makes us deeply aware that with the advent of the industrial Internet era, the underlying logic required for industrial Internet financial services is the scene and data." In fact, at present, small and micro enterprises do not lack credit, what is missing is the technology to find credit. Wang Hong stressed. At present, many small and micro enterprises carry out financial management and business development through Kingdee Cloud Services, so that Kingdee Finance and small and micro enterprises form a closer interaction scene and data connection. Through the authorization of small and micro enterprises, these scenarios and data can be mined through artificial intelligence and other technologies to make the enterprise portrait accurate, and then form data assets to be transmitted to financial institutions such as banks, assisting these financial institutions to quickly see the operating conditions of enterprises and identify business risks, and promote them to "dare to lend, willing to lend, will lend, and can lend".
In the view of many people in the financial technology industry, how to make scenarios and data more efficiently incorporated into the credit risk control model of bank financial institutions and further improve the matching degree and efficiency of small and micro credit transactions requires the integration of multiple resources. For example, if fintech institutions are familiar with the credit preferences and risk control capabilities of various banks, they can more efficiently convert the above scenarios and data into bank-approved risk control model data information, improve the matching degree of loan applications of small and micro enterprises with their credit products, and greatly improve the efficiency of small and micro credit approval and lending.
"This prompted us to work with 360 Digital to first focus on the development needs of specialized new small and micro enterprises, and create a gathering effect of technology, innovation and capital." Wang Hong pointed out. In the past, the approval of small and micro credit by banks may be as long as several weeks, but through multi-party cooperation, data, scenarios, risk control, and capital links can be more efficiently integrated, and the approval and issuance of small and micro loans is expected to be completed within 24 hours.
The reporter learned from many sources that with the vigorous development of industrial Internet finance, it is increasingly difficult for the current financial technology platform to realize the closed loop of data, scenarios and risk control alone. Specifically, each financial technology institution has its own focus on customer acquisition, scenarios, data, and risk control, resulting in certain limitations in the acquisition and analysis of the operating data of small and micro customer groups, so that there are some "shortcomings" and "blind spots" in the risk control model of small and micro business, resulting in the credit assets of small and micro enterprises are not comprehensive and accurate. Therefore, more and more financial technology platforms are actively exploring business cooperation, comprehensively complementing their respective scenarios, data, risk control, capital links and other advantages, forming a "1+1 is greater than 2" effect.
For example, many platforms involved in the financial management services of the industrial chain of small and micro enterprises will focus on the industrial and commercial data, financial data, fiscal and tax data and upstream and downstream capital turnover data of small and micro enterprises in terms of digging deep into the scene to increase credit, but lack insight into the personal relationship map of business owners, resulting in the credit assets of small and micro enterprises are not comprehensive enough, so that the moral hazard of small and micro credit business increases accordingly.
"We previously met a small micro-shop owner who sold tea, and their business turnover data did not have any problems and their operation was stable. In terms of operating data alone, his application for a tea purchase loan will be approved quickly. However, we eventually rejected his loan application, because we found through his personal network map that he knew a number of private loan intermediaries and was likely to use the loan funds for private lending profits, resulting in a great increase in loan risk. A corporate ERP service provider pointed out to reporters. This made them realize the importance of integrating multiple resources to improve data, scenarios, and risk control capabilities - through the analysis of small and micro enterprise industrial and commercial data, financial data, fiscal and tax data, and upstream and downstream capital turnover data of the industrial chain, they have sorted out more than 100,000 fields (which may affect the credit risk of small and micro enterprises), but in the actual operation link, only more than 6,000 fields really play a role in scene credit enhancement.
"In fact, more than 6,000 fields have not yet covered all aspects of the credit risk control judgment of small and micro enterprises, so we are seeking cooperation with a number of financial technology institutions to further broaden the breadth and depth of small and micro business data, and continue to improve our own small and micro business risk control model." He revealed.
"It's a continuous iterative upgrade process. However, in this process, how to improve the data network and credit asset coverage of small and micro enterprises is particularly critical. For example, at the risk assessment end of the operation of small and micro enterprises, as much as possible can be collected from the enterprise ERP, bills, silver tax interaction, e-commerce services, cashier logistics and other data for comprehensive assessment, effectively preventing business risks; at the risk assessment end of the personal repayment risk assessment of small and micro business owners, it is necessary to comprehensively collect various interpersonal relationships of small and micro business owners to form a complete network map for judgment, so as to eliminate moral hazards such as fraud. He pointed out. Once the comprehensive integration of multiple parties in data and scenarios makes the small and micro credit risk control model continue to be iteratively upgraded, it will effectively achieve cost reduction and credit quality improvement, and ultimately promote the growth of the scale of small and micro business of financial institutions, so that the "impossible triangle" will be solved.
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