OREANDA-NEWS. November 14, 2014. Agricultural Bank of China Limited (ABC) established the Small and Micro-sized Enterprises (MSE) Banking Department at the beginning of the year and moved faster to build an MSE financial service system from the Head Office to the outlets.

It comprehensively improved outlet functions to build its 23,500 outlets into basic units of MSE marketing and management.

In terms of credit process, ABC has further optimized authorization management and delegated the approval authority of MSE credit business to tier-two branches, which has shortened review and approval procedures and improved business efficiency; ABC innovatively designed the model of “batch credit granting” and launched the “credit factory” pilot program. It adopts batch marketing, batch reporting and batch processing to serve the MSE customers in business districts, industry chains, supply chains and industrial clusters that have the same features and financial needs.

Product and service innovation has always been the top priority of ABC’s MSE service. Since the beginning of the year, ABC has continued to promote “Quick Loan” for MSE customers, directly approved credit line and directly rated the customers according to their secondary repayment source and promised quickest disbursement within five to seven days. Moreover, ABC has created new ways of repayment and worked on the development of revolving loans, annual loans and other unique products. It also renewed the loans to quality MSEs by providing new loans to settle their outstanding loans to reduce their financing cost. In terms of the use of internet technology, ABC has launched the “Rock Cloud” platform and “Online Express” to provide MSEs with batch and one-stop online financing service and convenient payment service.

In order to further reduce the financing cost of MSE customers, ABC has strictly followed CBRC’s requirements when providing loans, constantly strengthened loan pricing management and offered favorable prices for MSE loans. Since the beginning of the year, ABC has canceled a number of financing service charges such as revolving credit line management fee, debt financing consulting fee and small account management fee for agro-related MSEs. It has removed 14 charging items such as counting of large corporate cash deposits, bulk electronic payment system-based universal saving and withdrawal and electronic bill payment. It has lowered the charging rate of 17 items such as cross-regional transfer, roaming remittance and cash pooling and provided each MSE with an account of zero annual fee and small account management fee. In addition, ABC has launched asset valuation service in some regions to reduce the valuation cost of MSEs.

ABC has actively performed its social responsibilities in recent year and continued to increase its credit support for MSEs. In the recent evaluation of the People’s Bank of China on the implementation of MSE credit policies by banking financial institutions in 2013, ABC ranked atop the 15 national banking financial institutions and its Shanghai Branch, Hubei Branch, Sichuan Branch, Shandong Branch and Beijing Branch were rated as “Excellent”. According to the statistics, ABC’s MSE loans increased by RMB157.1 billion and 23.94% in 2013, ranking the first among the large commercial banks by growth rate and increment. Since the beginning of the year, ABC has further increased financial support for MSE customers by refining its service system and business procedures, providing unique products, canceling and lowering service charges to solve the financing difficulty and reduce the financing cost of MSEs. As at the end of June, ABC had provided loans to 270,000 MSE customers, the balance of MSE loans increased by RMB97.9 billion or 12.04% over the end of the previous year, 3.5 percentage points higher than the average growth of total loans. ABC has continued to meet the regulatory objective.