Beijing micro financial service platform helps small and micro businesses ease difficulties caused by virus outbreak

As the Beijing Municipal Government makes all-out efforts to prevent and control the coronavirus outbreak, the People's Bank of China, the country’s central bank, has launched slew of measures to stabilize the economy, including credit easing and liquidity injection, especially for private, small and micro companies as well as manufacturers.

A comprehensive  financial service platform under the Beijing Financial Holdings Group(BFHG), focused on providing financing support for small and micro businesses,  prioritized its online financial services for enterprises in Beijing to help them cope with challenges caused by the virus outbreak.

The online financial platform has begun its efforts by conducting a questionnaire survey in collaboration with a research team of Tsinghua University to deeply study the difficulties of enterprises caused by the outbreak so as to provide targeted financial services for key enterprises and industries.

The survey focused on enterprises’ scale, industry, sales and cash balance, as well as the level of liquidity pressure they are experiencing. Companies of no more than 500 employees account for 93.5 percent of all samples in the survey, and over 1,000 questionnaires were collected online.

The survey results showed that since the outbreak began during China's Lunar New Year holiday, shopping malls, restaurants, cinemas and tourist sites where people tend to gather have been stripped of their customers. The virus outbreak has also prompted liquidity difficulties for small manufacturers and high-tech enterprises. The platform has sorted out 420 enterprises that are most impacted and provided them with quick access to targeted financing support offered by financial institutions.

The online financial platform is continuing its collaboration with financial institutions to  innovate credit products and optimize service mechanisms.

Special loan products will be launched to ease the financial pressure on small and micro enterprises and expand the scale of financing and support available to them .i.e. special loans aiming to support medical equipment suppliers.

In addition, the financial service platform is stepping up its efforts to develop a mobile platform, hoping to promote business and financing through online services.

The platform system can send short messages to enterprises with financing needs and follow up in real time.

It also helps small and micro enterprises and financial institutions realize financing applications and business acceptance online, while making  intermediary services, policy publicity and other operations available all through mobile phones.

The platform is present on the popular Chinese social media WeChat public service platform.

Providing services to both the Beijing municipal and district level enterprises, the platform also coordinates all districts in Beijing to innovate, collect, release and interpret policies to help enterprises solve practical difficulties.

Besides, the platform accelerated the step to establish confirmation of small and micro businesses' rights and supply chain financing system based on the blockchain technology with the aim to offer a new mode of credit financing. The system has been rolled out on trial, through which enterprises can apply for loans based on confirmation of rights for their accounts receivable of public procurement projects.

In order to help medical suppliers raise funding and to connect related enterprises with good credit but lack of collateral with financial institutions, the BFHG selected more than one hundred key medical equipment and device suppliers in Beijing based on big data credit investigation to guarantee their stable and efficient business operation.

BFHG will provide credit products with fewer pledges, low interest rates and exemption of service charges for medical enterprises by cooperating with the Agricultural Bank of China, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, China Minsheng Bank and China Merchants Bank.