Postal Savings Bank to build big data rural credit database

Postal Savings Bank of China Co, a large State-owned commercial lender, said on Tuesday it plans to build a big data database containing rural credit information during the next three years.

Currently, data concerning China's rural area are scattered all over the place. The bank will accelerate the construction of a digital platform in the rural area through technological measures as part of the effort to speed up digital transformation in the countryside, said Zhang Jinliang, chairman of Postal Savings Bank of China.

"We plan to build a database containing the information of about 20 million high-value customers who have a demand for credit," he said.

The newly-adopted outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) for national economic and social development and the long-range objectives through the year 2035 highlighted advancing rural revitalization across the board view improving the new urbanization strategy as a major task during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.

"We must take this historical opportunity of rural revitalization to fulfill our social and political responsibilities, while exploring a distinctive path for commercially sustainable development at the same time," Zhang said.

The bank will enlarge the scope and increase the depth of its services through digital transformation, striving to satisfy the financial needs of family farms and over 2 million rural cooperatives in China, he said.

It also will deepen cooperation with external platforms, including the government, insurers and financing guarantee companies, to build a synergized agro-related financial ecosystem. In this way, the bank's financial services will be embedded into scenarios of supply chains, production, everyday life and consumption in the countryside.

Last year, its new agro-related loans reached 149.7 billion yuan ($22.8 billion), and the outstanding balance of its agro-related loans was 1.41 trillion yuan.

Over 70 percent of the bank's 40,000 outlets are located in counties. With the increase in the middle-income population in Chinese counties, the bank also is seeing a huge market for wealth management with growth potential during China's implementation of the rural revitalization strategy.