Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a crucial foundation for high-quality economic development, and Zhejiang Province has consistently focused on addressing their financing difficulties. Since its launch a year ago, the National SME Capital Flow Credit Information Sharing Platform (hereinafter referred to as the "Capital Flow Platform") has facilitated the transformation of data elements into credit assets, opening up new avenues for enterprise financing. Taking advantage of this trend, Chouzhou Bank's Shaoxing Branch has leveraged the platform's "transparency capabilities" to innovate its lending model, precisely addressing the financing pain points of industries such as Shaoxing rice wine, and empowering the development of local SMEs.
In traditional lending, torreya nut growers and Shaoxing rice wine companies often face financing difficulties due to insufficient collateral and difficulty in verifying operating data. The innovation of Shaoxing Branch of Chouzhou Bank is first reflected in the restructuring of its credit granting logic: abandoning the traditional "collateral priority" approach, it leverages the "penetrating capabilities" of its cash flow platform to upgrade from traditional due diligence that emphasizes collateral and financial statements to intelligent risk control that emphasizes operations and cash flow. This involves integrating multi-dimensional data from industry transactions, logistics, and settlements—for torreya nut growers, the platform can capture real-time terminal sales revenue; for Shaoxing rice wine companies, it can penetrate the brewing and storage cycle, supply chain payment nodes, and distributor payment rhythms, transforming dynamic cash flow into solid credit assets, allowing asset-light entities to obtain credit.
Cash flow statements are like an electrocardiogram for a business, providing the most accurate reflection of its health. A cash flow platform further enables dynamic risk control throughout the entire process. Through data visualization dashboards, it allows for real-time tracking of loan fund flows, ensuring funds are accurately used for production stages such as torreya forest tending and rice wine raw material procurement, preventing misappropriation. Furthermore, when anomalies appear in a company's cash flow statements, account managers can intervene in advance to adjust credit policies, safeguarding branch assets while helping businesses mitigate operational risks in a timely manner.
Taking Tai Niang (Shaoxing) Wine Culture Communication Co., Ltd., a long-established Shaoxing rice wine enterprise, as an inheritor of Shaoxing rice wine intangible cultural heritage, as an example, it faced financial pressure in promoting inheritance and innovation, upgrading intelligent brewing production lines, and improving its warehousing and logistics system. However, it was hindered from financing due to a lack of traditional collateral. Chouzhou Bank's Shaoxing branch, relying on the "penetrating capabilities" of its capital flow platform, comprehensively reviewed the company's stable settlement records with upstream glutinous rice suppliers and downstream distributor payment flows. Combined with related data such as tax declarations and utility bill payments, it accurately outlined the company's stable operation profile and ultimately tailored a 4 million yuan credit line, efficiently breaking the financing constraints and injecting key momentum into the company's technological upgrades and market expansion.
(The author is the president of the Shaoxing branch of Chouzhou Bank. This article was compiled from an interview with Zhang Bingjie, a reporter from this newspaper.)
