Even if Internet giants Alibaba and Tencent launched in early 2015 WeBank, an online-only bank and the first in China, the financial institution did not grew as fast as expected. Other Chinese banks too are attempting to convince more rural residents to transact with them.
As of end of 2015, their digital banking platform had over 300,000 users, while total assets exceeded 800 million yuan. To further expand their business, the commercial banks are trying new solutions to entice more farmers and rural residents to borrow from the lenders, reported China Daily.
Lianing-basd Bank of Yingku, with assets more than 100 billion yuan ($15 billion), is inviting village cadres to help make lending decisions which is expected to lower the bank’s lending costs and financial risks. After giving farmers information about agriculture and preferential policy information about its online-to-offline platform, the bank studies the feedback of the farmers and the size of their fields, production volume and online transaction data of their products before it makes a lending decision, explained Lin De’an, the bank vice president.
In August 2015, Baoshang Bank Limited, based in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, launched its digital platform. Their target client were small companies and individuals who would want to try using online financial services. Liu Xin, assistant president of the bank, said that right from the start, the bank decided to give their target clients financial service instruments that would meet the demands of emerging economic entities in various scenarios of the online ecosystem.
Despite the slower-than-expected growth, internet companies have drastically altered the country’s financial sector the past few years, pointed out Crowd Fund Insider. The biggest growth were in the areas of peer-to-peer lending, wealth management and mobile payments.