Baidu’s fintech spinoff Du Xiaoman Financial has entered a formal strategic partnership with one of the country’s leading municipal lenders.
Du Xiaoman and Bank of Nanjing executed the strategic cooperative agreement on 26 October, which will see the two companies work together in nine key areas including payments and settlement, financial inclusion, retail finance, corporate finance, depository and escrow business, interbank financing, fintech, cross-border services and joint sales.
The two parties have reportedly provided their services to 1.5 million customers during the past year of ongoing cooperation, providing funds of nearly 20 billion yuan.
40% of the clients are small and micro-enterprises, with Bank of Nanjing stating that it will provide 10 billion yuan in credit to Du Xiaoman for enterprise development.
The two parties also plan to use the strategic partnership as a springboard for working with other financial institutions, via initiatives such as Bank of Nanjing’s “Xinhe Financiers Club” (鑫合金融家俱乐部) which has more than 140 commercial banks as members.
Bank of Nanjing already engages in in-depth coop ration with Ant Financial, with a focus on small and medium-enterprise financing and retail sale operations.
In 2017 Ant Financial helped Bank of Nanjing to create the online finance open platform “Xinyun +” (鑫云+) and related infrastructure upgrades.
Du Xiaoman has also sought to bring its fintech services to a greater number of financial institutions in China, creating the “Financial Big Brain” (金融大脑) for Agricultural Bank of China in 2017, as well as an upgraded smart app which was released in June of this year, and enables users to log-in via facial recognition technology and make account transfers via verbal commands.
Du Xiaoman has also worked with CITIC aiBank to create a consumer lending system which makes use of big data risk control, providing 40 billion yuan in loans to 2 million customers with the space of half a year.
Du Xiaoman has reportedly engaged in fintech cooperation with more than 500 financial institutions.
