Ant Financial Targets Chinese SME’s Using Artificial Intelligence

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The world’s biggest fintech company hopes to facilitate the provision of financial services to 30 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) and farmers around China by making its artificial intelligence services available to other lending institutions.

Alibaba-affiliate Ant Financial has announced the launch of the Star Plan, which will see online lender MYbank provide AI, computing and risk management capabilities to as many as 1,000 Chinese financial institutions.

MYBank expects the Star Plan to facilitate the provision of cost-effective financial services to 30 million SME’s and farmers in China over the next three years with the help of AI technology.

“The widespread application of advanced technologies in the SME financing space has dramatically improved risk management and lowered costs,” said Eric Jing, MYbank chair and executive chair and CEO of Ant Financial at the 2018 SME Financing Summit in Hangzhou.

“With these innovations we can unlock new opportunities for financial institutions and enable them to sustainably serve the needs of SME’s and farmers.”

Beijing has heavily stressed the need for China’s financial sector to better service the real economy, focusing in particular upon SME’s with the launch of targeted cuts to the required reserve ratio in April.

MYbank has used AI technology to develop the 310 model for SME financing, which involves the provision of a business loan by means of a three minute application on a mobile device, following by an approval decision in under a second without the need for human staff.

According to MYbank data its proprietary AI and risk management technology have managed to keep the non-performing loan ratio for credit to SME’s at around 1%.