MYbank launches Star Plan to support financial institutions

Through sharing these technological functionalities, MYbank - the online private commercial bank in China - aims to enable 1,000 financial institutions to provide more cost-effective financing services to 30 million SMEs and farmers in China in the next three years.

According to Toward Universal Financial Inclusion in China, a joint report published by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and the World Bank in 2018, only 14% of China’s small businesses have access to loans or line of credits, compared to 27% of smaller companies in G20 countries. The report highlighted a number of reasons why SMEs did not apply for credit including complex application processes, high costs of obtaining a loan, insufficient loan size, and long review and approval periods. According to China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, as of July 2017, there were approximately 73 million SMEs in China.

With a focus on serving SMEs and farmers, MYbank was established in June 2015 and was among the first batch of pilot private commercial banks in China. It was also the first bank in China that was set up entirely on the cloud, without physical branches. As one of the brands under Ant Financial Services Group, MYbank leverages Ant Financial’s AI, computing and risk management technologies to transform customer service and reduce cost.

MYbank pioneered the “310 model” in SME financing – a business loan that takes less than 3 minutes to apply for on one’s mobile phone, less than 1 second to approve, and which requires zero human intervention. Using proprietary AI and risk management technologies, the non-performing loan (NPL) ratio for MYbank’s SME business loans has been maintained at around 1%.

After opening up its payments services to a wide range of online and offline businesses, Ant Financial announced an “Internet Booster” plan in 2015 to support the digital transformation of traditional financial institutions by sharing Ant Financial’s technological capabilities.

In recent months, Ant Financial has accelerated its pace of opening up its technological
capabilities to financial institutions. On June 19, 2018, Ant Financial announced that it would share a full suite of AI functionalities with asset management companies to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs.

In May 2018, Banks including Huaxia Bank, China Everbright Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, China CITIC Bank, and Bank of Tianjin signed strategic cooperation agreements with Ant Financial to support the banks’ digital transformations.