Removing credit barriers will help improve finance services for SMEs

The State Council recently introduced a guideline document, saying the country will intensify efforts to coordinate the construction of a financing credit service platform to build a national integrated financing credit service platform network.

The guideline will help break cross-departmental, cross-regional and cross-level barriers that obstruct data sharing, solve the problem of small and medium-sized financial institutions and enhance the role of financial services in boosting the real economy.

China’s SMEs have long faced financing difficulties as they lack collateral and basic credit information data. The key to alleviating their financing difficulties is to lubricate the flow of credit information and enhance their credit.

With the continuous advancement of the construction of a social credit system, China has formed a “one center, multiple sources” financing credit information sharing service system in recent years. Here, one center refers to the credit information center of the central bank, which provides financial credit information services, and multiple sources refers to the National Center for Public Credit Information, local credit information platforms and marketoriented credit agencies. This credit information sharing service system has played an important role in promoting financial services to serve the real economy, especially small businesses.

However, it should be noted that new “isolated information islands” have been formed across departments, regions, levels, platforms and institutions. For example, public data flow between government departments is not fully open, and some public information data such as water, electricity and gas are scattered across various departments, increasing the difficulty of data integration and sharing. The problem of repeated construction among different platforms also exists, with data sources scattered and sharing standards not uniform. At the same time, the “multi-docking” between financial institutions and various credit information platforms and data sources has caused high costs but low efficiency.

All this highlights the need of the country to further improve its top-down toplevel design and overall planning, and break “isolated information islands” between various platforms. In this sense, the recent guideline marks a key move to solve this problem.

On the one hand, while making a big database, the country should strive to improve the quality and efficiency of credit information sharing, strengthen the collaborative governance of data quality, ensure the authenticity, accuracy and integrity of data, and improve the continuity and timeliness of data. On the other hand, while deepening the development and utilization of credit data, it should focus on strengthening information security and the protection of the rights and interests of information subjects. Security awareness should also be strengthened in all aspects of data sharing, use, transmission and storage, to prevent the risk of data leakage, which is an important prerequisite for the sustainable development of the national integrated financing credit service platform network.