Supply chain finance is becoming one of the important ways for enterprises to expand financing channels. In the era of "Internet plus", supply chain finance provides core enterprises and their upstream and downstream enterprises with trading platforms and financing solutions through innovative technologies such as Internet, big data credit investigation and inclusive finance, effectively improving the efficiency of supply chain finance services, and supply chain finance is becoming the next new investment channel. Based on the analysis of the background and successful cases of supply chain finance, this paper summarizes the financing mode and development path of supply chain finance, and discusses the future development prospect of supply chain finance.

I. development background: policy driven + demand driven

In 1998, SDB (now ping an bank) initiated the business of goods pledge in guangdong. In 2002, SDB put forward the concept of developing supply chain finance systematically and promoted the trade finance product portfolio. In 2005, SDB proposed to build the most professional supply chain financial service provider. Since then, China's supply chain finance has gone through three times of development, and now has formed a supply chain finance with multiple participants, multiple forms, multiple attributes and multiple combinations.

(I) supply chain finance 1.0: offline "1+N"

The supply chain finance model is collectively referred to as "1+N". Based on the credit support of the core enterprise "1", Banks complete the financing and credit support for a group of small, medium and micro enterprises "N". There are two main risks in offline supply chain finance: first, the bank is not good at controlling the authenticity of inventory quantity, and it is difficult to verify the behavior of repeated mortgage; Second, it is difficult to control operational risks in the business process.

(ii) supply chain finance 2.0: online "1+N"

The traditional off-line supply chain finance has been moved to online, so that the data of the core enterprise "1" can be connected with the bank, so that the bank can have access to the storage, payment and other real operational information of the core enterprise and upstream and downstream enterprises of the industrial chain at any time. Online supply chain finance can ensure multi-party online coordination and improve operation efficiency. But it is still centered on bank financing, with capital flows by default in the first place.

(iii) supply chain finance 3.0: online "N+N"

The establishment of e-commerce cloud service platform overturns the previous supply chain model with financing as the core, and turns to the transaction process of enterprises as the core. The thinking of the bank also began to change gradually, to build an e-commerce cloud service platform, so that the orders, waybills, receipt, financing, warehousing and other operational activities of small and medium-sized enterprises can be carried out on it, at the same time, the introduction of logistics, third-party information, set up a service platform, to provide supporting services for enterprises. In this system, the core enterprise plays the role of credit enhancement, making all kinds of transaction data more reliable.

Supply chain finance is booming and has been supported by national policies.

On February 16, 2016, the central bank, the National Development and Reform Commission, the ministry of eight ministries jointly issued "on the financial support of industrial restructuring increases efficiency of steady growth of several opinions, specifically mentioned" to develop the accounts receivable financing, "said" drive more supply chain joined the pledge of accounts receivable financing service platform ", "to promote large enterprises and government procurement subject actively confirm receivables, suppliers to help small and medium enterprises financing", etc.

At the end of 2016, the ministry of commerce and ten other departments jointly issued the 13th five-year development plan for domestic trade circulation, which explicitly mentioned the steady promotion of supply chain finance.

On March 28, 2017, the people's bank of China, in conjunction with the ministry of industry and information technology, the China banking regulatory commission, the China securities regulatory commission and the China insurance regulatory commission, issued the guidance on financial support for building a manufacturing power, which mentioned once again that financial products and services of industrial chains should be vigorously developed. Financial institutions are encouraged to rely on the core enterprises of the manufacturing industry chain to actively carry out various forms of financial business of the industry chain, such as warehouse bill pledge loan, account receivable pledge loan, bill discount, factoring, and international and domestic letters of credit, so as to effectively meet the financing needs of the upstream and downstream enterprises of the industry chain.

The financing difficulty of small and medium-sized enterprises is the endogenous power driving the rapid development of supply chain finance. Smes are not favored by Banks and other financial institutions due to their low credit rating, less collateral such as fixed assets, poor management and opaque financial information, etc. Therefore, financing difficulties of smes have always been a long-standing problem in Chinese society. Supply chain finance, by providing customized financial services to a certain link or the whole chain of the supply chain, helps smes to solve the financing problem; At the same time, it helps Banks to realize differentiated competition, expand the market of smes, and bind core enterprises and customer clusters with high value-added services. To help core enterprises improve the efficiency of the whole industrial chain, core enterprises can also serve as a provider of funds for members of the supply chain, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, to meet the needs of industrial transformation and upgrading of core enterprises, and to realize their accumulated industry expertise and resources through financial services.

Ii. What is supply chain finance

Supply chain finance is to provide customized financial services to a certain link or the whole chain of the supply chain. By integrating information, capital, logistics and other resources, it can improve the use efficiency of capital, create value for all parties and reduce risks. This service with in the process of trading, the upstream and downstream of the main pattern is the core enterprise as the object of service, relying on the advantage more avenues where access to cheap capital and high credit through relatively effective credit system and improve the risk prevention measures, provide financing services to industrial chain upstream and downstream customers, gain new profit growth point, build closer industrial ecosystem.

The essence of supply chain finance is credit financing, which is a financial activity based on the real transaction background, and in essence is to help members in the chain to activate current assets. In the traditional way, the financial institutions verify the credit of the core enterprise, the inventory of the financing group and the receivables information through the data provided by the third-party logistics and warehousing enterprises. In the cloud era, large Internet companies have become supply chain financing upstarts by virtue of their big data, such as ali ant financial, jd.com and suning.

The foundation of supply chain finance is industrial supply chain. Without reasonable and effective support of industrial supply chain, financial activities will become water without source and wood without foundation. Therefore, to truly engage in and promote supply chain finance, it is necessary to restructure the industrial supply chain.

Development of supply chain finance based on industry, realize the industrial transformation, full use of the Internet, the Internet of things, cloud computing emerging technologies such as refactoring industry, the small and medium-sized enterprise network system organically integrated into the industry, the form can win-win and common development of industrial ecology, set up effective industry rules and credit, financial to have development space. Otherwise, when industrial order and industrial competitiveness have not been formed, empty talk about supply chain finance will only lead to distortion. In addition, finance should truly serve the real economy, give up short-term windfall profits, promote industrial development with finance, and realize two-way circulation and progress of finance and industry, instead of treating industry as a chicken killing the goose that lays the golden eggs and using capital as the bait to lure the chicken into the cage. At the moment there is a kind of phenomenon, some financial institutions believe that as long as there is money, build a e-commerce platform, can the industrial organization, captive to come in, especially small and medium enterprises carry out of borrowing, then use engaged in capital operation platform, in order to buy, this is a kind of typical speculative thinking, the concept of service due to a lack of real industry, will eventually produce new financial crises and disasters.

Iii. Analysis of supply chain financing mode

Capital flow is the blood of enterprises, and the status of capital flow of enterprises will determine the fate of enterprises. However, the cash flow gap of smes often occurs in the three stages of procurement, operation and sales. According to the needs of enterprises in different stages, supply chain finance designs different financing modes, which can be divided into three types.

Accounts receivable financing mode -- sales phase

Accounts receivable financing mode refers to the business mode in which the seller transfers the outstanding accounts receivable under the credit sale to the financial institution and the financial institution provides financing for the seller. Account receivable financing based on supply chain is generally for smes upstream of the supply chain. Small and medium-sized enterprises (upstream creditor enterprises), core enterprises (downstream debt enterprises) and financial institutions are all involved in the financing process. Core enterprises play a counter-guarantee role in the whole operation. Once the financing enterprises (small and medium-sized enterprises) have problems, the core enterprises will assume the responsibility of making up for the losses of financial institutions. Before financial institutions agree to provide loans to financing enterprises, they still need to conduct risk assessment on enterprises, focusing only on the repayment capacity of the downstream enterprises, trading risks and the operation of the whole supply chain, not just the credit evaluation of smes.

In this model, at the core of corporate debt, because of the good credit strength, and long-term stability between Banks and credit relationship, therefore in the process of financing for small and medium enterprises to play the role of a counter guarantee, unable to repay the loan, once the small and medium enterprises also should assume corresponding responsibility, reducing the loan risk of the bank. At the same time, under the effect of this constraint mechanism, small and medium-sized enterprises in the industrial chain will choose to repay bank loans on schedule in order to establish a good credit image and maintain long-term trade cooperation with large enterprises, avoiding the phenomenon of evading and rejecting bank loans. Based on supply chain financial accounts receivable financing mode, to help small and medium-sized enterprises overcome its assets and profitability to meet the bank lending standards, financial situation and the disadvantages of credit level can not meet the level of bank credit, using core credit strength of big companies, to help small and medium-sized enterprise obtained the bank financing, and to a certain extent, reduce the loan risk of the bank.

At present, the domestic supply chain financing platform mainly deals with the financing under receivables. Among them, there are three types: trade, credit and property management, all of which are based on predictable, stable and clear cash flow in the future. This financing method quickly activated the main assets of smes -- accounts receivable, which enabled smes to quickly obtain the cash flow necessary for maintaining and expanding operations, and solved the problem of slow payment collection and difficult financing of these smes.

Source: sohu finance