Ⅰ Background
In the past, private enterprises in Huzhou commonly faced challenges such as difficulties in renewing loans, financing constraints for SMEs, low operational efficiency for offline business, and overall inefficient financing processes5 , which significantly hindered both local economic development and sustainable enterprise growth. To address these issues, the Huzhou Municipal People's Government utilized the establishment of the Green Finance Reform and Innovation Pilot Zone as an opportunity to implement a series of innovative measures. Among them, the development and implementation of the "Green Loan Express" fintech platform has effectively alleviated the financing difficulties and high costs faced by SMEs in the green industry by precisely matching financing needs with financial resources.
Ⅱ Theories
The core function of the "Green Loan Express" platform is to facilitate the intelligent matching of investment and financing needs between enterprises and banks, while also providing government interest subsidies and policy notification services. The basic operational process of this platform can be summarized in the following steps: 1.Banks, as providers of funds, join the platform, publish credit product information, and assign professional customer managers to engage in online communication to meet the financing needs of enterprises. 2.Enterprises, as the demand side, join the platform and use its intelligent matching system to search for s uitable financing solutions. 3.The government plays a regulatory and supportive role by optimizing interactions between enterprises and banks through the collection and analysis of platform data, and by offering necessary financial subsidies and policy support to advance the development of green industries.
Ⅲ Practices
The operation and promotion of "Green Loan Express" are supported by the development of 4 fundamental systems: resources, evaluation, service, and incentives.
1. Resource System: Establishing a Comprehensive Data Foundation
"Green Loan Express" leverages provincial and municipal public data platforms to integrate government, financial, and third-party data, creating a comprehensive financial data platform that encompasses data application, model analysis, and data sharing functions. Through data cleaning and classification of "Green Loan Express", Huzhou Municipal People’s Government has significantly enhanced data quality and established a big data resource system. While ensuring data security and privacy, "Green Loan Express" has also standardized data product development services, providing a robust data foundation to support the digital transformation of financial institutions and the growth of green financial products.
2. Evaluation System: Automating Green Labeling to Reduce Pre-Loan Credit Costs
Leveraging this data, the Huzhou Municipal People’s Government embedded an ESG evaluation system within "Green Loan Express," creating corporate carbon accounts and developing an integrated "ESG + Carbon Account" evaluation system. This system significantly reduces the costs financial institutions incur when identifying green activities, enabling the integration of evaluation results into credit management processes and facilitating the creation of financial products tied to ESG factors.
3. Service System: Implementing Intelligent Bank-Enterprise Matching for End-to-End Supervision
"Green Loan Express" utilizes big data to identify enterprises' financing needs, acting as a bridge between businesses and banks within its jurisdiction while tracking service progress online. The platform has established a "detection + dispatching" service system, shifting the model from "enterprises seeking banks" to "banks proactively serving enterprises." With over 20 model algorithms—covering areas such as corporate green and low-carbon assessments, sales revenue, trade orders, and energy consumption—the platform detects financing needs and allocates requests to banks, improving the efficiency of financial services. Regulatory authorities oversee the entire process, dynamically monitoring bank response times, follow-up actions, and service outcomes.
4. Incentive System: Providing Transparent Interest Subsidies and Streamlined Online Services
To further reduce financing costs for enterprises, the Huzhou Municipal People’s Government has integrated fiscal subsidy policies with preferential policies from 26 banks, all accessible through the "Green Loan Express" platform. The application process has been streamlined to make it easier for enterprises to find suitable financing options. For those with ESG ratings of "deep green," "medium green," or "light green," LPR subsidies of 12%, 9%, and 6%, respectively, are offered. Features such as the "policy application express" and "online office" for policy reviews allow enterprises to complete the entire application, review, and implementation process online, providing more convenient access to policy benefits. Furthermore, the preferential green finance policies from 26 banks are publicly available on the "Green Loan Express" platform, allowing green enterprises to access more favorable interest rates.
Ⅳ Impacts
"Green Loan Express" has successfully facilitated financing connections for 43,000 enterprises, with bank credit lines exceeding 520 billion yuan, resulting in a year-on-year increase of 30.98% in green loans across the city. Green loans now represent 33.65% of total loans, ranking first in the province.
From the perspective of Data Comprehensiveness: "Green Loan Express" has integrated data from over 60 departments, encompassing more than 270 million data records.
From the perspective of Enterprise Coverage: The platform has conducted evaluations for 22,000 enterprises, including over 6,900 green enterprises. From the perspective of Financial Institution Participation: The platform has incorporated over 500 bank branches, with more than 3,200 customer managers providing real-time online services.
From the perspective of Policy Implementation Effectiveness: The platform has disbursed policy subsidies totaling over 90 million yuan to more than 2,400 enterprises, ensuring the inclusiveness and leading role of policies.
Reference:
[1]Xinhua News Agency (2023). The governance of Huzhou, characterized by active government and efficient market The governance of Huzhou with 'government proactive, market efficient’
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