Ping An Bank’s unwavering focus on small and medium-sized enterprises within the Greater Bay Area is clear, both from the scale of its lending and from the digital and other rollouts it has made with these customers in mind.
By the end of 2022, Ping An’s total loan balance for small and micro enterprises was Rmb557.3 billion ($80 billion), up 41% year on year. It had lent to 1.1 million enterprises, a jump of 220,100 from the beginning of 2022. Ping An was the joint-stock bank with the largest number of small and micro customers, and the fastest growth rate in 2022. It also had the lowest average account balance among large joint-stock banks in China.
For the GBA, Ping An’s balance of small and micro loans was Rmb158.5 billion – or roughly 22.5% of the total balance – showing an impressive year-on-year rise of 43%. The total number of GBA customers increased nearly 13% to 142,800.
Xinfa Cai, special assistant to the president, highlighted Ping An has supported the overall market infrastructure within the GBA in several ways, helping both corporate and retail customers as a result. Technology and finance have long been the building blocks for boosting economic development within GBA. Ping An has made both a priority, using technology such as blockchain, artificial intelligence and big data to support innovation across supply chain finance, trade finance and other areas.
Its innovations in recent years include a full-function blockchain trade-finance business and satellites focused on the internet of things.
For SMEs, Ping An offers flexible cash management for cross-border use of the renminbi – something that has appealed to owners of small businesses. Another winning feature: online loan approvals that can be completed in a mere 10 seconds, thanks to the use of big data to sift through applications rapidly.
As it increases its focus on MSMEs in the GBA, Ping An is adapting new tools to ensure its risk system remains resilient. That means using algorithms and data to assess the risks of different customers and develop more accurate pricing strategies tailored to each business – thus helping Ping An to keep its loan book reasonably strong and to assist clients in making better financing decisions.