When Fintech Meets New-Quality Productivity: Hangzhou Bank's "Breaking Boundaries" Experiment and Long-Term Practice

In recent years, China’s science and technology–finance market has developed rapidly, and especially after the 2023 Central Financial Work Conference proposed to do a solid job of the “five major pieces of financial work,” science and technology finance has entered a golden development window.

At this critical juncture—where the “14th Five-Year Plan” has been perfectly concluded and the “15th Five-Year Plan” ushers in a new journey—science and technology finance has been placed in an even more important position. At the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, a major task was clearly put forward: “promote the deep integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation.” Combined with the new situations and new requirements for science and technology innovation and industrial development, how to promote industrial upgrading led by technological innovation, cultivate and grow emerging industries and future industries, and consolidate and strengthen the foundation of the real economy is a subject that urgently needs in-depth discussion.

On the track of building new quality productive forces through technological innovation, Zhejiang Province can be said to be in the top regional echelon nationwide. Behind this are the support of credit funds and services from financial institutions.

As the first bank in Zhejiang Province to be listed on the A-share main board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Hangzhou Bank has, for more than ten years, positioned science and technology finance as a core differentiated track. After years of intensive cultivation and iteration, it now has a mature science and technology finance service system, building its own “moat” in serving new quality productive forces.

Looking back at the past five years, Hangzhou Bank has always adhered to the responsibility of serving local economic development, keeping in sync with industrial upgrading and generating resonance. It has won, year after year, the first-class award for outstanding units supporting the development of Zhejiang’s economic and social undertakings, as well as the Outstanding Contribution Award for the Zhejiang Financing-Smoothness Project, and it has also been honored as model collectives of Zhejiang Province and Hangzhou City, and received honors such as “the most satisfactory bank by private enterprises in Zhejiang.”

Deepen the industrial chain, select sub-sectors precisely, and deliver targeted drip irrigation

The core goal of “vigorously developing science and technology finance” is to open up a virtuous cycle among “technology–industry–finance.” Technological innovation is “the source of fresh water,” industrial innovation is “the bridge of transformation,” and both are an important carrier of new quality productive forces. The “mutual pursuit” between the two is the only way for high-quality economic development.

Hangzhou’s pillar industries mainly focus on three major areas: the digital economy, modern services, and high-end manufacturing. In recent years, as manufacturing has been promoted toward higher-end, more intelligent, and greener development, the transformation and upgrade of traditional industries has accelerated, emerging industries have continued to spring up, and the industrial landscape is taking on a brand-new look.

Against this backdrop, Hangzhou Bank has long focused on emerging sectors oriented toward national strategies and regional industrial development. It has deeply allocated resources to key areas such as next-generation information technology, high-end equipment, biopharmaceuticals, and green low-carbon sectors, staying in step with the construction of Zhejiang’s “415X” advanced manufacturing industry clusters and Hangzhou’s “296X” modern industry cluster.

According to a relevant person in charge at Hangzhou Bank, to meet the needs of enterprises of different industries and different stages, Hangzhou Bank has built a tiered and classified financial supply system to ensure precise implementation of policies, as follows:

For the “revitalization” of traditional industries: In the next three to five years, the main line is to deeply integrate digitization and greenness into traditional manufacturing. We will focus on supporting projects such as intelligent transformation, digital upgrades of equipment, and energy-efficiency improvement.

For the “growth and strengthening” of emerging industries: Enterprises in this category often “look at orders and look at projects.” We will rely on the industrial chain and the order data from chain leaders to provide precise services such as capacity expansion, equipment updates, and supply-chain finance, so that enterprises can “hold onto orders and expand capacity” during growth windows.

For the “layout” of future industries: including embodied intelligence, quantum technology, and others. These directions have the characteristics of “long cycles and high uncertainty.” We will work with the government, industrial capital, and leading enterprises to jointly plan and improve mechanisms for integration of investment and lending, risk compensation and results transformation, and build a truly combined support system of “patient capital + industrial capital + commercial capital.”

Taking Hangzhou’s artificial intelligence industrial chain as an example, Hangzhou’s current structure is “strong in the midstream and strong in applications,” but it is relatively weak in “upstream hardware and industrial scenarios.” Therefore, in the next 3–5 years, Hangzhou Bank will conduct a systematic, end-to-end layout of key links such as computing-power hardware, basic software, industrial scenarios, and embodied intelligence. Through “strengthening and filling the gaps in the chain,” we will precisely direct financial resources to key-node enterprises that can solve “bottlenecks” and achieve technological breakthroughs.

Promote innovation in institutional and operational mechanisms, and build a distinctive brand of science-and-technology innovation finance

“Building a science-and-technology bank with Chinese characteristics” is not just a slogan. Even more prioritized than product innovation is a professional system spanning everything from organizational structure, product and services, to risk management and performance incentives—providing policy support for long-term, sustainable operations.

On July 8, 2009, Hangzhou Bank established the province’s first dedicated science-and-technology finance institution—the Hangzhou Bank Science and Technology Sub-branch—launching the curtain-raiser for the development of science and technology finance with the principles of “start early, do small, do hard technology, and do long-term.”

In today’s top-level design, Hangzhou Bank adopts the overall blueprint of “overall coordination by the head office, leadership by functional lines, and institutions fighting at the front line.” It builds a rapid service mechanism from the head office to branches, and establishes a vertical, penetrative organizational structure that runs from the head office’s “Science and Technology Finance Headquarters” to science-and-technology innovation centers and dedicated sub-branches in various locations, ensuring that strategic resources are concentrated.

To ensure effective operation of the dedicated system, the bank has built supporting mechanisms such as risk assurance, performance evaluation, and ecosystem co-building. In risk management, it sets up an independent approval center for science-and-technology finance businesses and implements separate risk tolerance policies. In performance and incentives, we reduce the weight of traditional deposit-and-loan profit evaluation for dedicated science-and-technology institutions, increase process indicators such as the number of customers served and product coverage rates, and encourage long-term companionship. In this way, an endogenous support system for sustainable development is formed.

As a pioneer on the path of exploring science-and-technology finance, Hangzhou Bank adheres to the “three specializations and one innovation” philosophy of “dedicated, focused, professional, and innovative.” It continues to deepen innovations in systems, mechanisms, products, and services. After more than a decade of practice, it has completed three key iterations, and it is now moving toward the data- and industry-professionalization-driven “Sci-Tech 3.0” model.

By continuously advancing cooperation with government departments, industrial funds, venture capital institutions, high-tech parks, guarantee companies, and others, Hangzhou Bank continuously promotes activities such as industry-chain matchmaking, policy consulting, and investment-and-financing matching. It actively helps transform scientific and technological achievements, and works together with others to establish a reliable financial service system for enterprises’ science-and-technology innovation.

Unblock financing difficulties and bottlenecks, and deepen full-lifecycle services

Science and technology innovation is complex and diverse. The financial needs of different science-and-technology innovation entities and technology-based enterprises vary significantly across different stages of growth. Differences in customer targeting and tiered, classified management are the foundation for providing full-lifecycle services to enterprises. Only by establishing a financial service system that covers technology-based enterprises throughout their full life cycles and across the entire chain can we truly open up the channel between science and technology innovation and capital markets, achieving a win-win situation for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements and high-quality economic development.

Enterprises at the start-up stage often lack “credential backing” and collateral. How to analyze the “gold content” of a science-and-technology enterprise? This is the difficulty for such enterprises to obtain loans that match them.

A newly emerging technology enterprise in Hangzhou’s intelligent recognition sector—WT company—has been granted multiple patents in 2025, including “a cable tunnel cable monitoring system and method based on intelligent recognition,” “a robot inspection data management system and method based on machine learning,” and “a dynamic sensing and adjustment system and method for multi-axis robotic arms,” demonstrating its technological strengths in intelligent recognition, robot inspections, and robotic arm control. Recently, the company received new orders, creating new financing needs. Under traditional credit models, because it is still at the start-up stage, the company cannot obtain bank loans through tangible collateral.

After Hangzhou Bank learned about this situation, it used algorithms to precisely profile and score the enterprise from five dimensions—“policy, capital, technology, team, and industry.” Based on the company’s high-growth characteristics, including its high-tech positioning in an AI intelligent quadruped robot and continuous high-intensity R&D investment, it was included in the “Qianlong Plan” and a credit line of RMB 2 million was granted to the customer.

Compared with traditional credit models, when applying for this loan, the enterprise does not need to fill out forms; it only needs to authorize data on the platform to obtain a pre-approved credit amount, featuring pure credit and a “borrow when needed and repay as you borrow” structure. The story of the “Qianlong Plan” is a vivid example of Hangzhou Bank supporting start-up-stage science-and-technology enterprises.

For enterprises in the growth stage, the main focus is on integrated investment-and-lending related business. The biggest pain point in serving these enterprises is how to judge their growth potential, which is a common shortcoming among banks. Hangzhou Bank not only hones its “internal strength,” but also actively promotes the coordination of “external forces,” and through models such as bank-to-bank cooperation and government-to-bank coordination, it builds a new ecosystem for science-and-technology finance with shared risk and mutual benefit.

To meet differentiated needs of science-and-technology enterprises at different life-cycle stages, under the “Zhejiang Science and Technology Joint Loan,” three types of sub-products are set up: “inclusive joint loan,” “growth joint loan,” and “lead (guiding) joint loan.” Through joint credit granting by multiple banks, they provide coordinated support to technology-based enterprises.

Hangzhou Bank covers a large number of high-quality biopharmaceutical customer groups across Hangzhou and the Yangtze River Delta region. Many enterprises already have the bank involved when they begin their research and development.

For example, WT, a start-up medical enterprise incubated by West Lake University, was the first internationally to achieve precise mass spectrometry testing of pregnant women’s key nutritional comprehensive metabolic capability during pregnancy, providing an effective approach for preventing birth defects. In the early stage of the company’s establishment, Hangzhou Bank’s Science and Technology Sub-branch stepped in proactively. When equity financing had not yet taken shape, the sales scale was relatively small, and funding was relatively scarce, the bank provided timely funding support. It also proactively introduced partners from Hangzhou Bank’s science-and-technology finance ecosystem, helping the company quickly complete a round of equity financing, effectively meeting the company’s funding needs for R&D transformation, production and operations, and expanding scale. After years of development, the company has risen to become an emerging leader in the industry.

For enterprises in the mature stage, in addition to project loans such as fixed-asset investment, Hangzhou Bank also pays attention to needs such as mergers and acquisitions and going overseas. As one of the first batch of city commercial banks piloting technology enterprise M&A loan programs, to date the bank has accumulated the design and optimization of merger-and-acquisition plans for more than 50 technology enterprises within its operating region. In Zhejiang Province, both the number of filings for technology enterprise M&A loan disbursements and the business scale are provisionally ranked first.

As a representative enterprise of new quality productive forces, the above cases are a microcosm of Hangzhou Bank’s services to numerous technology-based enterprises. This kind of full-cycle service not only effectively resolves enterprises’ financing difficulties at different stages, but also reduces uncertainty-related risks of science and technology innovation through the long-term companionship of financial capital.

Focus on the next “five years,” and inject sustained momentum into new quality productive forces

As a national hub for the digital economy and innovation-driven entrepreneurship, Hangzhou’s number of unicorn and quasi-unicorn enterprises has long ranked among the top nationwide, covering strategic emerging sectors such as life and health, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, and cross-border e-commerce. Hangzhou Bank’s combined coverage rate for these enterprises reaches 90%, making it a reliable partner for unicorn and quasi-unicorn enterprises in Hangzhou.

From even more intuitive data: as of the end of September 2025, the balance of technology loans was 121.509 billion yuan, serving more than 30,000 science-and-technology innovation enterprises, and the market coverage rate of Hangzhou’s unicorn and quasi-unicorn list reached 90%. Hangzhou Bank adheres to “invest early, invest small, invest long-term, and invest in hard technology.” In the field of new quality productive forces such as next-generation information technology and high-end equipment manufacturing, the coverage rate of credit support has been gradually increasing.

Looking ahead to the “15th Five-Year Plan,” Hangzhou Bank will deeply implement the plan requirements of “promoting the deep integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation,” and include science-and-technology enterprises as one of the key target customer groups in the next five-year strategic planning cycle. It will focus on “hard core replacement” technical fields, the manufacturing industry sector, as well as the province and city’s emerging industries and future industries.

Doing a solid job on the major undertaking of science and technology finance is not something that can be achieved overnight. Simply relying on the expansion of loan scale cannot meet the policy’s original intent. In the future, only by building a multi-tiered, diversified support system covering enterprises at different development stages can we solve the deep-seated challenges of providing financial services for science and technology.

In serving new quality productive forces, Hangzhou Bank has never stopped innovating. From a single “credit product” to integrated “professional capabilities,” Hangzhou Bank has actively explored a sustainable and professional route for science-and-technology innovation finance, growing together with Hangzhou’s urban innovation DNA—growing more and more determined as it goes on……