SINOSURE: Digitising tailormade services for SME exporters
Zhang Fa, Head of Marketing Center, and Huang Xi, Project Manager, at the Digital Finance Department/SME Department at SINOSURE explain the digitisation tools SMEs in China are now able to use.
Governments and financial institutions have reached a consensus about inclusive finance, echoing the initiative by the UN and World Bank early in the 21st Century. Thanks to the fast development of the internet and big data technology, financial institutions are making extensive digital innovations by combining clients’ demands in different scenarios with online financial services. With the trend of digitisation in the financial industry, ECAs have also begun to provide more online services so that more exporters, especially SMEs, can get access to professional credit insurance cover and improve their risk management.
SINOSURE continues to give high attention to SME exporters. The number of SME exporters served has grown from 20,000 in 2012 to over 140,000 in 2022. However, the lag between limited human resources and the growing demand from the large number of SME clients has become increasingly prominent.
To address this problem, SINOSURE embraced its ‘digitised service’ as the solution. In the latest round of reforms since 2019, SINOSURE began to widely use digital technologies in its SME business. By the end of 2022, the first phase of digital transformation was completed.
That means over 300,000 insurance policies have been signed online, there are more than 190,000 registered users and 1.48 million clicks of SINOSURE’s own self-developed mobile App platform “Xin-bu-tian-xia” (which literally means ‘going global with credit’). There are over 130,000 followers and 2.45 million clicks of SINOSURE’s WeChat-based knowledge-sharing platform.
Digital services embraced
From its business experience, SINOSURE has learned that SME exporters have a strong demand to expand their overseas markets, improve their risk management ability and monitor risks. To meet these needs, SINOSURE developed a series of digital services.
For example, in 2020, three digital products ‘Credit Traffic Lights’, ‘Credit Navigator’ and ‘Credit Alarm’ were successively launched on the unified mobile App platform ‘Xin-bu-tian-xia’. These products can jointly help SME exporters in their full business cycle by providing market information, counterparty risk recognition and risk tracking.
Credit Traffic Lights is a quick-search tool for overseas buyers’ credit information. The results, which are shown as red, yellow or green lights, can be displayed in a few seconds after the user inputs the buyer’s name or simply scans a business card, respectively implying high, moderate and low probability of credit risk. Up until now, more than 40,000 exporters as users have searched over 100,000 buyers in 200 countries.
Credit Navigator is a tool connecting its users with potential business opportunities. It displays the names and purchase history of major overseas buyers when a user inputs the code of the exported good. To date more than 6,000 SME exporters have performed over 270,000 queries with this tool.
Credit Alarm is a tool for risk tracking. Users can subscribe to information of specific countries, industries or their counterparties. They will then receive notifications of risk events on mobile phones and take measures accordingly.
Training for SMEs
In 2020, SINOSURE launched SME School, an online platform which provides video courses with reading materials for SME exporters.
Video courses are lectured by SINOSURE experts, covering basic knowledge of export credit insurance, risk management, contract management, among others. As of 2022, over 400 courses have been released.
Online reports of country risks by SINOSURE can enable exporters to get better understanding of their exporting destinations. A newsfeed service is provided on a daily basis to inform exporters about market dynamics.
For easier accessibility, SINOSURE set up social media accounts as the carriers of SME School to the public. As of 2022, the number of followers has exceeded 130,000 with over 1.6 million clicks. Some courses were reposted on exporter training platforms by some local governments of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
The practice of SME School has proved that, besides export credit cover, SME exporters also have strong demand for risk management related education and information sharing services from ECAs. Increasing the supply of such knowledge services can help SME exporters enhance their competitiveness.
The next phase
From 2023, SINOSURE launched its second phase of digital transformation with a three-year Action Plan aiming at a digital marketing and service system via an ‘online + offline + ecological’ approach, so as to better deliver SINOSURE's professional services to more SME exporters, and support them to achieve healthy and sustainable development.
Case study – lessons learned in practice
In 2021, an SME exporter C in Zhejiang Province received an inquiry from a well-known overseas importer M for a $4 million purchase. After rounds of negotiation by email, M provided a contract in the name of a procurement company – Company MM – said to be a member of its group. When reviewing the contract text, exporter C compared it with the typical risks and cases learned at the course Five Steps of Credit Risk Management by SINOSURE SME School and found out several dubious points in the text.
The results of the inquiry about Company MM via the ‘Credit Traffic Light’ showed a red light with a notice of “company in abnormal state, further verification recommended”.
With the help of a SINOSURE customer manager, exporter C was told that Company MM had several negative credit records against Chinese exporters. In the end, exporter C rejected the contract and avoided a potential loss through trade fraud.
