Fintech And Cash Dividend Policy

As a new type of financial business model,Fintech has flourished worldwide.In China,Fintech has achieved leapfrog development,which has been highly valued by government.The 13 th National People’s Congress stressed the need to improve a modern financial system that is highly adaptable,competitive and inclusive.During the14 th Five-Year Plan period,Fintech will step into a new stage of deepening application,inclusiveness and sharing in China.At present,the economic consequences of the development of Fintech are the focus of scholars worldwide.The existing literature shows that at the macro level,Fintech will promote economic growth and national income and consumption,and at the micro level,it will affect enterprises and the investment and consumption level of families.The emergence and development of Fintech is a new revolution to the traditional financial industry.The change of external financial environment often affects the adjustment of financial policy and operation behavior.Dividend policy is one of the three main financial policies of listed companies and it is also an important measure to coordinate the interests of various stakeholders.CSRC issued regulations linking the refinancing eligibility with the proportion of cash dividends in 2008.CSRC clarified the implementation of differentiated cash dividend policies in 2022.This series of policies have played a positive role in promoting enterprises to distribute cash dividends.The existing literature has conducted a large number of research on the influencing factors of cash dividend policy,but the relationship between Fintech and cash dividend policy has not been touched.Based on this,this paper attempts to explore the relationship between the development of Fintech and cash dividend policy from the theoretical and empirical levels,and explore its internal mechanism and economic consequences.Based on information asymmetry theory,principal-agent theory and transaction cost theory,this paper investigates the relationship between Fintech and cash dividend policy by using the data from 2011 to 2020.Theoretically,the development of Fintech can promote the payment of cash dividends by improving the "financing environment" and "information environment".The empirical results show that :(1)The development of Fintech has an obvious effect on the trend and level of cash dividend payment.The results are still robust when the endogeneity problem is controlled by various methods.(2)The development of Fintech can promote the payment of cash dividends by alleviating the financing constraints and improving the quality of corporate information disclosure.(3)The role of Fintech in promoting cash dividend payout level is more significant in small-scale and non-state owned enterprises(4)The development of Fintech can further play a positive role in protecting investors’ interests and enhancing corporate performance by improving the level of cash dividends.The contributions of this paper are as follows.Firstly,from the perspective of Fintech,this paper studies its impact on corporate cash dividend policy,expanding the research on the influencing factors of cash dividend payment.Secondly,from the perspective of cash dividend policy,this paper studies whether enterprises will actively adjust their cash dividend policy in the era of leapfrog-forward development of Fintech,which enriches the research on the economic consequences of Fintech.Thirdly,the results of this paper have important practical significance,which enlighten the government to give more supportive policies to the development of Fintech,such as big data and artificial intelligence.Thus,it is beneficial to standardize the basic system of capital market,protect the legitimate interests of investors and promote the sustainable development of listed companies.