The new round of technological transformation is gathering momentum, with new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, blockchain, and the Internet of Things developing rapidly, reshaping the global innovation landscape. At the same time, the integration of technology and finance is accelerating, and technological innovation is bringing disruptive changes to the business, service, and operational models of the financial industry.

At the recently held "2024 Bankers' Financial Innovation Forum and Bankers' Financial Innovation Achievement Release Conference," experts discussed the bottlenecks, pain points, and future paths of developing technology finance, exploring how commercial banks can seize the opportunities of technology finance development, promote technological innovation with financial power, and inject strong momentum into the development of new quality productive forces.

Technology finance is ushering in development opportunities

Technological innovation is the core element of developing new quality productive forces. Under the background of the new era, it is particularly important to do a good job in technology finance, to unblock the "technology-industry-finance" chain, and to promote the precise flow of financial resources between technological innovation and industrial innovation. From a macro perspective, China's technology finance development environment continues to improve, and commercial banks are ushering in development opportunities in the field of technology finance.

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"At present, the technology finance policy system, mainly including fiscal support, government guidance funds, and the People's Bank of China's re-lending tools, is continuously improving. At the same time, the exemplary leading role of the science and technology financial reform pilot zone is becoming increasingly prominent, leading the way for technology finance to take the lead in trials. The technology financial service system, covering areas such as bank credit, venture capital, stock market, and bond market, continues to be optimized and improved, with service quality and efficiency continuously increasing," said Xing Wei, Secretary of the Party Committee and Executive Vice President of the China Banking Association.

Doing a good job in technology finance is an important measure to promote the development of new quality productive forces. The banking industry should accurately grasp the development opportunities of technology finance, strengthen the top-level design of supporting technological innovation, and enrich the product system supporting technological innovation. Actively carry out business such as intellectual property pledge financing and supply chain finance, providing financial services covering the entire life cycle of technology-based enterprises and the entire chain of the technology industry.

The Vice President of CITIC Bank said that as an important part of serving the real economy, doing a good job in technology finance is both a political requirement to implement the deployment of the Party Central Committee and an internal need to promote its business innovation and development. From a practical perspective, for commercial banks, developing technology finance is not only about product iteration and service innovation but also a reshaping of strategic layout, business system, and business philosophy, to achieve a high degree of unity between current benefits and long-term value. Developing technology finance requires efforts in "three fulls," that is, providing "full cycle" service support, building "full chain" service capabilities, and constructing a "comprehensive" service system.

Banks need to break traditional thinking patterns

It is undeniable that there are still some risks and challenges in the development of technology finance. "Technology-based enterprises in the initial and growth stages often have the characteristics of high technology, high risk, high returns, and light assets, and generally have difficulties in valuing patent technology and lack sufficient and effective guarantees, which do not match the traditional risk preferences of commercial banks," said Liu Jianjun, President of Postal Savings Bank.

"In the process of developing technology finance, financial institutions need to determine reasonable risk pricing, innovate business models, to obtain normal operating profits, and enhance development sustainability," Xing Wei believes that the adaptability between technology and finance still needs to be improved, and the traditional mortgage credit thinking of financial institutions cannot adapt to the light asset attributes of technology-based enterprises. At the same time, the information sharing mechanism is not yet sound, and data across industries and departments have not been fully utilized. In addition, the research and investment capabilities of financial institutions still need to be effectively strengthened.

While financial water continues to nourish technology-based enterprises, technology is also giving back to the financial industry, empowering financial institutions. With the rapid development of financial technology, commercial banks, based on technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and blockchain, continue to build a safe, compliant, and unified technology platform base, and continuously improve risk control capabilities. For example, banks use artificial intelligence algorithms for automatic approval and post-loan management to improve service quality and efficiency; they use blockchain technology to achieve transparency and non-tampering of transaction data, enhancing the security and credibility of the financing process.

Liu Jianjun believes that with the application of emerging technologies such as mobile Internet, big data, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing, commercial banks can establish a more abundant, fast, and low-cost financial product system, breaking through the bottleneck of offline business development and reducing financial costs. In the future, data information sharing at the全社会 level can continue to be expanded, data standardization management can be promoted, platform information integration and interconnection can be strengthened, and information gaps in the financial service market can be made up.

"To develop technology finance, it is necessary to maintain an 'empty cup mentality' and adhere to the spirit of self-innovation. Commercial banks need to break thinking patterns, seek change with the new, and adapt to change, and be as vibrant, warm, and passionate as the booming technology industry," said the President of Huishang Bank, adding that the bank, based on the scientific and technological innovation characteristics of Anhui Province, will focus on doing a good job in technology finance and introduce more professional and diversified financial products and services that are suitable for the characteristics of scientific and technological innovation enterprises.

Coordinate the relationship between risk and return

Experts believe that the development of technology finance should coordinate the relationship between risk and return. In the future, commercial banks should continue to optimize the system and mechanism of technology finance and expand the scope of mortgage and pledge services for technology-based enterprises. Improve and perfect the indicator system and performance assessment mechanism of technology finance, and explore the establishment of a fault-tolerant mechanism for innovation in technology financial services.

At present, the banking industry has begun to explore customer identification and risk assessment based on big data and other technologies, but the core elements it relies on are credible data from tax, judicial, and other fields. There are still difficulties in reflecting the technical value and future development potential of technology-based enterprises, making it difficult for commercial banks to "accurately portrait" customers.

Industry insiders said that commercial banks should strengthen the use of credit enhancement measures, including policy support for financing guarantees and various types of collateral, and continue to iterate credit line calculation models based on the future profitability of technology-based enterprises, to build an exclusive risk evaluation system, including basic information evaluation, scientific and technological innovation capability evaluation, financial stability evaluation, market prospect evaluation, and risk management evaluation, to continuously optimize risk control models and effectively achieve risk prevention and control.

Looking forward, industry insiders believe that commercial banks should build a large-scale, open financial cloud service platform to achieve docking with external information platforms, integrate internal and external data, achieve data interconnection of technology-based enterprises, enrich the multi-dimensional use of data resources of technology-based enterprises, and empower the development of technology finance. At the same time, actively participate in government risk fund pools, and strengthen cooperation with loan risk compensation funds, investment guidance funds, and guarantee companies, to form a "investment, loan, guarantee" three-in-one cooperation model to dilute the loan risks of banks.

"It is recommended to establish and improve the responsibility sharing and loss sharing mechanisms among enterprises, financial institutions, and governments; introduce insurance companies, financing guarantee companies, etc., to establish a loan risk compensation fund for technology-based enterprises, improve the credit enhancement measures and guarantee system for technology-based enterprises; accelerate the introduction of relevant standards, including the identification standards for scientific and technological enterprises, equity option business standards, etc., to create a good condition for financial institutions to serve technology-based enterprises," said Dong Ximiao, Chief Researcher of China United.