China's capital city Beijing has announced a series of policy initiatives for five key financial areas: tech finance, green finance, inclusive finance, pension finance, and digital finance. These initiatives aim to bolster the capital's new quality productive forces and foster high-quality development in each sector.
The guidelines for advancing inclusive finance in Beijing encourage banks to increase lending to small and micro enterprises, focusing on first-time loans, renewals, credit loans, and long-term financing options. The document also promotes developing insurance products tailored to the needs of small businesses and individual entrepreneurs, providing customized risk coverage solutions.
For pension finance, the guidelines call on financial institutions to diversify pension products, including individual pensions, commercial pension insurance, and retirement-specific funds. The guidelines also support creating trust products tailored for retirement needs, which cover medical expenses and senior living services. Insurance companies are encouraged to pilot long-term care insurance and expand liability insurance for senior care institutions.
In digital finance, Beijing outlined 15 tasks, focusing on enhancing core resources, driving innovation, improving regulatory standards, ensuring security, fostering new products, enhancing digital finance service quality, and expanding the digital finance ecosystem.
Beijing has achieved significant growth in these sectors, with inclusive loans to small and micro-sized enterprise reaching 950 billion yuan (US$133.18 billion) by the third quarter. Additionally, the city has fully transitioned into a digital renminbi pilot zone and continues to build a national-level fin-tech hub, attracting over 200 leading firms and service providers in financial technology.