SHENZHEN, China, July 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- WeBank, the world's leading digital bank and the first digital-only bank in China, participated in the Finance China 2021 Conference in conjunction with The Asian Banker China Awards 2021 held in Beijing by The Asian Banker. Speaking at the event, Gong Li, the General Manager of Corporate Banking at WeBank, discussed WeBank's successful practices in servicing micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) with its corporate working capital loan product "Weiyedai".
WeBank won four honors awarded by The Asian Banker, one of the region's most authoritative platforms for strategic business information for the financial services community. The awards, namely "Best Digital Bank in Asia Pacific", "Best Digital Bank in China", "Best AI Initiative" and "Best SME Loan/Financing Product in China", recognize WeBank's continuous innovation in digital banking services, particularly its outstanding performance in providing financial support to MSMEs.
WeBank Wins 4 Awards at The Asian Banker China Awards 2021
WeBank achieved outstanding results servicing MSMEs
At the Conference, Mr. Gong discussed how WeBank uses its self-innovated fintech to serve MSMEs, including connecting and financing the upstream and downstream MSMEs in the industry chain.
WeBank has always been committed to serving the real economy. At the end of 2017, WeBank launched Weiyedai, China's first online corporate working capital loan. It fulfills MSMEs' financing demand of highly frequent, short in duration, small in ticket size, and at times, urgent in nature, which effectively solves their financing problems of low approval rate. Mr. Gong also discussed how WeBank proactively explores new methods to better serve underbanked customers from different industries. Based on the successful model of Weiyedai, WeBank further offers supply chain financial services, and provides loans to start-up technology MSMEs.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, WeBank gave full play to the advantages of Weiyedai, leveraging its contactless service to provide instant credit service to ease the sudden financial burden encountered by MSMEs.
WeBank has achieved outstanding results in terms of supporting the real economy. As of the end of 2020, WeBank had reached 1.88 million MSMEs, provided credit services to 560,000 of them, and issued more than RMB 450 billion in MSME loans. In 2020, its balance of MSMEs' managing loans increased by 207%, while over 100,000 corporate customers received their first loans from WeBank. Further, its number of corporate customers accounts for 7% of the total corporate loan customers nationwide.
Mr. Gong Li at the panel discussion “Financing SME Getting Economy Back on Track”
WeBank won "Best Digital Bank in Asia Pacific" for the third consecutive year
At the Awards, WeBank won "Best Digital Bank in Asia Pacific" under The Asian Banker's International Excellence in Retail Financial Services Awards 2021 category for the third consecutive year. In addition, WeBank won "Best Digital Bank in China", "Best AI Initiative" and "Best SME Loan/Financing Product in China", showing that WeBank is widely recognized for its application of digital capabilities in financial inclusion.
Since its inception, WeBank has been adhering to driving business development through technology innovations and constructed its ABCD (Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Cloud Computing, Big Data) fintech capabilities. In 2015, it launched the world's first core banking system based on a secure and controllable distributed architecture. The system significantly reduced technology costs, with single-account IT operation and maintenance costs lower than the average level of 10% in the industry. Its high availability, high flexibility, and high scalability enable WeBank to support a large number of customers and a high concurrent transaction volume. As of the end of 2020, the system had supported 750 million transactions per day at its peak, which effectively supported WeBank's inclusive financial service. Over the years, WeBank has optimized its risk management and expanded the scope of long-tail customers it serves at lower costs, which has further developed its commercially sustainable model of financial inclusion.
WeBank has built a financial business ecosystem driven by artificial intelligence (AI), making financial services more convenient and accessible to the public. With R&D investment in related fields including federated learning, precision marketing, WeBank has widely applied AI technologies at the front, middle, and back offices. This enables the front office services to significantly improve efficiency with such technologies as facial recognition, optical character recognition (OCR), online customer service, etc. Further, the application of AI recommendations and advertising have realized precision marketing and customized services. At the middle and back offices, AI also plays a crucial role in streamlining business process automation and ensuring intelligent risk control.
About WeBank
WeBank Co., Ltd. ("WeBank") is the world's leading digital bank and the first digital-only bank in China. Launched in 2014, WeBank has provided more convenient financial services to 270 million individuals and 1.88 million micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). In 2019, Moody's and Standard & Poor's gave WeBank "A3" and "BBB+" ratings respectively. Adhering to the vision "Connect and Empower with Fintech", WeBank is driven to build core competencies through innovation, technology and skilled employees.
