Growth potential, explosive innovation buzzword for investment

During my visits to technology companies and banks in Zhejiang province in October, I found that an increasing number of lenders are no longer prioritizing short-term revenue and profit when they serve tech firms. Instead, they are focusing on forward-looking growth potential, explosive innovation capacity and industrial chain expansion ability of entrepreneurs.

By offering long-term support and comprehensive financial services, these banks aim to achieve win-win outcomes with their corporate clients.

To meet the financing needs of tech firms throughout their entire life cycle, many lenders are partnering with their groups' securities firms, investment companies and industrial funds, as well as external institutions. They organize matchmaking events for tech investment and financing, and use mechanisms such as "loan-investment linkages" to provide high-quality technology enterprises with full-spectrum services that combine commercial banking and investment banking functions.

Banks are also actively connecting with government departments, investment institutions, advisory firms, industry leaders and research institutes to build a diversified ecosystem for tech finance.

For tech-based, asset-light startups and small enterprises, many banks have launched unsecured loan products or adopted risk-sharing models with financing guarantee institutions. Under the government-backed financing guarantee system, banks bear no less than 20 percent of the loan risk, while financing guarantee companies shoulder the remaining 80 percent. This arrangement helps lower banks' risk exposure and alleviates financing challenges for enterprises in the research and development stage.

For growing tech companies, banks not only offer larger and longer-term credit support, but also provide equity financing matchmaking and other multidimensional financial services. For mature tech enterprises, banks deliver comprehensive support across supply chain finance, international finance and capital market services, covering the entire upstream and downstream, domestic and overseas markets.

Financial sector professionals widely believe that banks need to enhance their understanding of technology. Many banks are now bringing in professionals from investment and research institutions to help them assess whether a sci-tech innovation project has real value and development potential. With these specialists, banks can even help startups connect with resources and address pain points they encounter during their growth process.

Many key technical staff at tech startups are unfamiliar with finance. Banks therefore need to act as their financial advisors, building trust through close communication so that these enterprises are willing to share various aspects of their development. In this process, beyond credit granting, banks can integrate internal and external resources to provide assistance in areas such as investment, consulting, resource matching and IPO-related services.

This approach has multiple advantages. On the one hand, it better meets enterprises' diverse financial needs and, through comprehensive services, allows banks to gain deeper insight into companies' operations and strategies, thus reducing information asymmetry and managing risk. On the other hand, it enables lenders to broaden revenue sources, move beyond traditional net-interest-margin-based profit models, optimize business structures and promote long-term strategic cooperation with enterprises for mutual benefit.

However, such practices place high demands on banks' service capabilities and professional expertise. Integrating internal and external resources requires significant investments in manpower, material and financial resources, raising operating costs. Moreover, since integrated financial services cover a wide range of businesses and multiple links, potential conflicts of interest and increased complexity in risk management must be carefully addressed.

Looking ahead, banks are expected to strengthen innovation in technology-based credit products — such as intellectual property pledge loans — to unleash the value of intangible assets owned by tech firms.

They should also further leverage big data and artificial intelligence to enhance credit approval efficiency and service quality; build technology finance service platforms offering integrated financing, incubation and consulting for private tech enterprises; and promote the deep integration of tech innovation with capital markets.