OneConnect Grants 1st Blockchain-Based Unsecured Loan in China
- The new financing platform is backed by OneConnect, which recently got listed on the NYSE.
- The platform works with data coming from 26 government institutions, using it to evaluate risk for more than 11 million companies.
Photo by Business Wire
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Chinese province of Guangdong can now benefit from a new financing platform launched on January 2. It is being backed by the major Chinese fintech company OneConnect, which was recently listed on the New York Stock Exchange. The company is a leading technology-as-a-service provider for Chinese financial institutions.
This launch signals that the digital government and the fintech sectors are undergoing deeper integration, based on blockchain technologies. It offers a possible solution to the issues that many small and medium-sized businesses face at the moment, promising to decrease costs and processing time required for receiving financing.
Guangdong province governor Ma Xingrui, Ping An Group chairman and CEO Ma Mingzhe, and OneConnect chairman and CEO Ye Wangchun were present at the launch ceremony.
OneConnect relied on data from Guangdong’s “digital government”, along with its personal blockchain, AI and big data technologies to create a platform that provides financing to SMEs and solves the problem of information asymmetry.
The company manages to do so by provisioning a broad spectrum of commercial credit profiles for businesses, while also providing solutions for trade, supply chain, and intellectual property financing. This helps banking institutions with their risk management, while also improving the financial services they offer.
At the moment the platform operates on data, which is split in 213 categories and is coming from 26 government departments. It gathers information and makes a business profile, which is used to evaluate the risk for more than 11 million companies.
On top of that, the platform was able to connect with 129 financial institutions in the province, including ICBC, China Construction Bank and Ping An Bank. It also launched more than 300 financial products.
The SME platform’s biggest asset is the blockchain technology on top of which it is built. The information sharing, privacy protection, and mutual trust mechanism enable an accurate and secure way of managing corporate profiles.
All this helps financial institutions to obtain business information while conforming with legal regulations. Blockchain proves to be a major contributing factor in solving financing problems for SMEs, regardless of the field in which they are engaged.
During the launch ceremony the Guangdong provincial governor, Mr. Ma, officially introduced the “Intelligent Matching” feature of the SME financing platform and observed as the platform accepted and granted its first online unsecured financing credit based on blockchain technology.
In just 10 minutes, Huizhou Shenghua Industry Co., Ltd. was funded for 1.12 million yuan in supply chain financing from ICBC. Guangdong Sunlux IOT Technology Co., Ltd. received 500,000 yuan in foreign trade financing from Ping An Bank, and Corehelm Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. was granted 200,000 yuan in intellectual property financing from China Construction Bank.
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