Research Report on the Development of Fintech in SMBs（2022）
Supporting the shift of finance from speculative to accurate economy services and serving small businesses and the agricultural sector ("Sannong") are the starting and endpoints for developing small and medium-sized banks. Fintech is crucial in enhancing banks' ability to serve the real economy. The nation’s top-level designs, such as the 14th Five-Year Plan for Digital Economy Development, the People's Bank of China Fintech Development Plan (2022-2025), and the Guiding Opinions on the Digital Transformation of the Banking and Insurance Industries from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC), are accelerating digital transformation. In facing new challenges and opportunities, small and medium-sized banks must balance security with development, goals with tools, and innovation with transformation, gradually exploring a focused, specialized, and proprietary path to digital transformation.
To help small and medium-sized banks find breakthroughs in fintech applications and create optimal digital transformation solutions, the Internet Finance Association of Small and Medium-Sized Banks (Shenzhen) Alliance (referred to as the “SMB Alliance”), in collaboration with OneConnect and the FinTech 50 Forum, recently released the Research Report on the Development of Fintech in Small and Medium-Sized Banks (2022). The report uses detailed research data, scientific research models, rigorous professional analysis, and numerous successful case studies to illustrate the current state of digital transformation in SMBs from an in-depth and breadth perspective. It also offers recommendations for addressing key challenges.
Since 2017, the SMB Alliance has continuously focused on SMB digital transformation, annually publishing the Research Report on the Development of Fintech in Small and Medium-Sized Banks. Over time, it has developed a research framework for observing and analyzing digital transformation in SMBs. This year’s report builds on five years of accumulated experience and refines the “Hive Model” evaluation framework, established in 2020, which covers six dimensions: strategy, organization, technology, data, applications, and ecosystem. The framework has been further refined into 18 evaluation indicators. In January, the CBIRC released the Guiding Opinions on the Digital Transformation of the Banking and Insurance Industries, outlining requirements for strategic planning, organizational process building, business operations digitalization, data capability building, technological capability building, risk prevention, organizational safeguards, and regulatory oversight. This upgrade to the Hive Model incorporates the key points from the Guiding Opinions, providing a more comprehensive and dynamic evaluation of fintech evolution while highlighting the inherent structural differences within SMBs. The upgraded model offers a panoramic view of fintech development and emphasizes the industry’s commonalities and individual banks’ unique characteristics. It creates an analytical and evaluative framework aligned with general financial principles while being tailored to the specific needs of SMBs.
