| How to alleviate the financing difficulties of SMEs is an important issue in the transition period from high-speed economic development to high-quality development.Information asymmetry is the fundamental reason for the difficulty and high cost of financing of SMEs.The root cause of asymmetric information between banks and enterprises comes not only from the lack of hard information,unqualified collateral and lack of credit records on the credit demander,but also from the lack of technological innovation on the credit supplier,resulting in low information screening ability.At present,innovation has gradually become the primary productive force leading development.The integration of Finance and science and technology shows great potential in improving the inclusive financial service system and improving the efficiency of resource allocation.Over the past two decades,China’s fintech has developed rapidly.Taking the fintech development plan(2019-2021)issued in 2019 and the fintech development plan(2022-2025)issued in2022 as important nodes,the top-level design of fintech development has been gradually improved,and fintech has gradually changed from competitors and destroyers to partners of traditional financial institutions,The traditional financial institutions represented by commercial banks have gradually become participants and promoters of the current development of fintech from passively accepting the impact of fintech.The technological progress of financial suppliers brings new opportunities to alleviate the financing difficulties of SMEs.Therefore,it is necessary to deeply study the internal mechanism and practical effect of "bank digitization-small and micro enterprise loan".In this paper,fintech specifically refers to the technology research and development and financial products and services provided by emerging fintech enterprises.Bank digitization refers to the dynamic process of traditional commercial banks absorbing digital technology to realize the innovation of financial service mode and the reconstruction of financial ecosystem.By combing the literature on fintech,commercial bank digitization and small and micro enterprise credit,it is found that the existing research still has the following disputes and needs to be further studied:(1)the existing research pays more attention to the impact of external fintech on banking business,operation and efficiency,ignoring the innovative behavior of commercial banks driven by fintech,And the index system has not been established to accurately quantify the dynamic process of digital development of commercial banks;(2)At present,there are abundant researches on the credit field of SMEs,but most of them focus on the availability of credit,ignore the problem of expensive financing caused by interest rate cost and mortgage and pledge requirements,and conduct empirical research based on the unilateral data of banks or enterprises;(3)The existing literature mostly uses the regional level indicators to measure the overall digital level of fintech or commercial banks,ignoring the differences in the digital level of banks at the individual level,and the discussion on the advantages of small banks and relationship loans under the background of fintech still needs to be in-depth.The existing research has laid a solid foundation for this paper and has important reference value and guiding significance.Based on the survey data of SMEs in Jiangsu Province from 2016 to 2019,this paper empirically tests the impact of bank digital development on the loan availability and loan cost of SMEs,in order to answer: what is the current level of fintech and Commercial Bank digital development in China? Does fintech promote or inhibit the digital development of commercial banks? Can bank digitization alleviate the financing difficulties and expensive problems of SMEs? Whether the comparative advantages of banks of different sizes in serving SMEs have changed under the empowerment of digital technology,and whether the theory of "small bank advantage" is still valid? The answers to the above questions will help clarify the logic behind the integrated development of Finance and science and technology,accurately evaluate the effectiveness of financial innovation driven by digital technology in alleviating the credit constraints of SMEs and promoting the development of Inclusive Finance,and provide policy suggestions for the digital transformation of the financial industry and the construction of a long-term mechanism for the real economy of financial services.This paper is divided into nine chapters.The main research contents and conclusions are as follows:Research content 1: analysis of the current situation of financial technology,commercial bank digitization andfinancingof SMEs.The historical experience of the evolution and development of the financial industry shows that the technological innovation and the development of the financial industry rise alternately.In essence,the process of financial development is also the process of financial innovation.This paper analyzes the current situation of digital development of fintechand commercial banks around the world,collects the annual reports of commercial banks manually,constructs the digital development index at the bank level with the help of text mining method,and analyzes the digital development level and evolution trend of commercial banks in China.In addition,by combing the relevant policies and financing status of SMEs in China,this paper provides a practical basis for the later paper to test whether the digital development of banks can alleviate the pain points of financing of SMEs.This paper holds that the adaptability between the technical characteristics of digital technology and the information intensive attribute of the financial industry makes scientific and technological innovation the driving force of financial innovation,which is also the fundamental reason why the development of external financial science and technology drives banks to carry out digital transformation.At present,China’s commercial banks mainly carry out digital transformation through internal R & D and external cooperation,and the digital level has been significantly improved in recent years.However,the digital development of different types of banks appears differentiation,and the "Matthew effect" in the banking industry still exists.Based on the analysis of the current situation at the level of SMEs,it is found that the current economic contribution of SMEs in China does not match their financial support,and SMEs still take bank credit as the main source of financing.With the turbulence of international political and economic situation in recent years,the operation vulnerability of SMEs has been exposed.The problems of single financing channel,less available funds and relatively high financing cost still need to be solved.Research content 2: analysis of the driving effect and nonlinear impact of external fintechon the digital development of commercial banksBased on the relevant theories of information technology,this paper analyzes the impact of external fintechon the digital development of commercial banks and uses evolutionary game to analyze the competition and cooperation relationship between fintechand commercial banks.Based on the panel data of China’s commercial banks from2011 to 2019,this paper constructs a fixed effect model to test the driving effect of fintechon the digitization of commercial banksand uses the panel threshold model to test the nonlinear impact of financial technology.In addition,based on the differences of different types of commercial banks in the choice of digital transformation path,this paper uses sub sample regression to test the heterogeneity of the impact of financial technology on the digital development of large and small banks.The research conclusion shows that external fintech can significantly improve the digital level of commercial banks,and all sub dimensions of fintech play a significant role in promoting.However,the impact of fintech on the digital development of banks of different sizes is heterogeneous.Large banks with large assets and unlimited business scope are more significantly affected by fintech.At the same time,the impact of fintech on the digital development of commercial banks is nonlinear.With the improvement of the level of fintech,the marginal impact on the digital development of commercial banks through technology spillover effect is greater,and the technology gap and technology competition among peers also show threshold effect.Research content 3: analysis of the impact of commercial bank digitization on the availability of loans to SMEsThe reality of credit constraints of SMEs is the problem of difficult and expensive financing.Firstly,this paper tests the impact of commercial bank digitization on the availability of loans for SMEs.Based on the theory of information asymmetry,this paper analyzes the causes of credit constraints of SMEs,and how bank digitization can improve the loan availability of SMEs through the progress of loan technology.At the empirical level,the micro survey data of SMEs in Jiangsu Province from 2016 to 2019 are matched with the digital data of commercial banks,and the fixed effect model is constructed to test the impact of bank digitization on the loan availability of SMEs from two aspects of loan acquisition and loan scale.In addition,the heterogeneity is analyzed based on the bank enterprise distance and enterprise digital information endowment.The results show that the improvement of the digital level of commercial banks can improve the loan acquisition probability and loan amount of SMEs.From the perspective of heterogeneity analysis,the digitization of commercial banks can make up for the financial geographical exclusion caused by the lack of traditional financial supply;But at the same time,enterprises with more "digital footprints" are more significantly affected by the digital development of banks.When enterprises cross the threshold of loan acquisition,the increase of loan amount requires enterprises to provide more digital information.This also shows that under the change of digital technology,new bank enterprise matching relationship based on digital information may appear in the credit market.Research content 4: the impact of commercial bank digitization on the loan cost of SMEsBased on the analysis of the impact of bank digitization on the loan availability of SMEs,this paper further analyzes the impact of bank digitization on the loan cost of SMEs.At the theoretical level,based on the transaction cost theory,it analyzes that bank digitization reduces the loan cost of SMEs through the cost mechanism and risk control mechanism.At the empirical level,it uses the above bank enterprise matching data to test the impact of bank digitization on the loan cost of SMEs from the price type and non price type costs respectively.In addition,starting from the connotation of the "advantages of small banks" theory,this paper believes that due to the heterogeneity of digital path selection and digital development level of banks of different sizes,the comparative advantages of large and small banks in collecting,screening and processing information of SMEs will change.Large banks use digital technology to break information barriers and improve the credit availability of SMEs And make use of its own capital cost and scale advantage to effectively reduce the loan cost,which weakens the applicability of the "small bank advantage" theory based on scale matching.Therefore,based on the bank size,this paper also tests the heterogeneity of the impact of different types of bank digitization on the loan cost of SMEs,and explores the reasons for its differential impact.The results show that the improvement of bank digitization level can reduce the price cost(loan interest rate)and mortgage and pledge requirements of SMEs to obtain loans,and improve the probability of SMEs to obtain loans by guarantee and credit.The theoretical analysis of the applicability of the theory of "small bank advantage" shows that large banks mostly adopt internal R & D path to realize digital transformation,and more actively carry out digital development driven by economies of scale;Limited by talent,capital and other factors,small banks mostly adopt external cooperation paths for digital transformation,and their business scope is limited,which is difficult to realize the scale effect of digital products,resulting in the lack of internal motivation for the digital development of small banks.The heterogeneity test based on bank scale shows that the digitization of large banks plays a more obvious role in reducing the loan cost of SMEs,that is,large banks have the comparative advantage of serving SMEs under the power of digital technology.From the perspective of mechanism analysis,the digital development of small banks has not significantly reduced costs and risks at the current stage,which may be the reason for the weakening of the applicability of the "small bank theory".In addition to the above research contents,this paper also makes a case study on the impact of commercial bank digitization on the credit of SMEs as a supplement to the above research contents and conclusions.Through the comparison of typical cases of small and micro enterprise credit business under traditional mode and digital mode,it is found that the small and micro enterprise credit business mode enabled by digital technology has the advantages of low business cost,high risk control ability and strong popularization,which is conducive to improving the availability of loans for SMEs and reducing the cost of loans for enterprises.At the same time,the loan risk of SMEs is also reduced accordingly.The small and micro enterprise loan business model under the digital transformation of banks makes it possible to achieve the dual goals of financial inclusion and commercial sustainability.Based on the practical problems of the digital development of commercial banks and the difficulty and high cost of financing of SMEs under the background of fintech,combined with the relevant theories of information asymmetry theory and information technology development,this paper constructs the logical framework of the impact of bank digital development on the credit of SMEs,and follows the research idea of "technology information resource allocation",This paper analyzes the digital development of commercial banks and its practical impact on the credit of SMEs under the background of fintech from the theoretical and current levels.In addition,based on the heterogeneity of bank scale,this paper analyzes and explains the applicable boundary of "small bank advantage" theory in the process of digital development of banking industry.According to the research of this paper,the digital development of commercial banks is conducive to alleviate the long-standing financing difficulties of SMEs,but it is also found that different types of commercial banks in China are divided in the digital development.We should face up to the positive role of fintech and guide banks to formulate differentiated digital development strategies,promote the deep integration of Finance and technology,and encourage SMEs to participate in the digital economy and enjoy digital dividends equally,While advocating scientific and technological innovation,we should use science and technology to drive financial supervision and prevent potential risks. |
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