| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Finance |
| Founded | Luqiao Precinct, Taizhou, Zhejiang (June 28, 1993) |
| Headquarters | Taizhou, Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China |
| Key people | Mr. Wang Jun (王钧), Chairman of the Board and CEO Mr. Jin Xuanyu (金轩宇), Chief risk officer |
| Products | Banking |
| Revenue | CNY 132 million before tax (2006), around $16.5 million (Asset = CNY 240 million (2006), around $ 30 million |
| Employees | > 600 (2007) |
| Website | www.tlxys.com |
Zhejiang Tailong Commercial Bank (Chinese: 浙江泰隆商业银行) is a small Chinese commercial bank in Taizhou, Zhejiang province, China. The bank has a relatively short history. It is comparatively well known in China because of its intensive public relations work in context with the SME finance supported by the government. Is this context it was termed as the Chinese Grameen Bank. This comparison is not accurate. Tailong Commerial Bank operates in one of the richest and economically most active regions in China and targets local business men and not women living below the poverty line like Grameen. Also Grameen bank and Tailong Commercial Bank use fundamentally different lending technologies. The most important difference is that the Chinese bank is purely operating in the commercial mode and does not receive or provide any form of subsidize to or from anyone, because the bank executives do not believe that they are a charity organization.
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the bank was established in 1993. The bank had a very humble beginning as a credit union with an asset of only one million Renminbi Yuan and seven employees in two small rented rooms dated back on June 28, 1993. The bank has since gradually expanded and today, it has a total of nine branches in addition to its headquarter and ranked number two behind Taizhou City Commercial Bank among the biggest eleven local banks in the Luqiao Precinct of Taizhou, Zhejiang, with 21.9% of total local deposits, and 20.27% of total local loans by the end of 2006. On August 15, 2006, the status of the bank was upgraded from credit union to commercial bank, and thus was accordingly renamed as Zhejiang Tailong Commercial Bank (浙江泰隆商业银行) from its original name Taizhou City Tailong Urban Credit Union (台州市泰隆城市信用社).
Although the credit union was performing adequately in the first half decade since its birth, it was struggling in the fiercely competitive Chinese market. As a result the bank focusses its market strategy on small and mid-sized business.
Since its incept, the bank has provided over 60 billion CNY (around $ 8 billion) to its clientele, and over 90% of which are peasants. For its loans made to microbusiness which averages 51,000 CNY (around $ 6,400), over 90% of the customers are peasants turned entrepreneurs. One of the practice of the bank copied from its larger rival Taizhou City Commercial Bank is that the bank must adjust its opening hour to that of its client. For example, if a client is vendor close at 9:00 pm, then the bank must not close at anytime earlier than 9:00 pm because the vendor may need to go to the bank after she/he closes.
The bank has focused on SME loans up to a size of RMB 5 million. Over 90% of loans made is less than one million CNY (around $ 125,000.
Since its clientele often lacks the assets required by larger banks when applying for a loan, the Zhejiang Tailong Commercial Bank developed a method similar to the American immigration system: sponsorship. Lending decisions are not primarily based on assets, but on third party (guarantor) and other soft information.
The number of loan officers is more than one third of the total staff, due to the labor intensive nature of SME business.
In addition to the work of loan officers, the banks also institute a strict policy of not making any new loans to customers who still have not completely paid back an earlier loan. As a result of these measures, the non-performing loans of the bank has never exceeded 0.9%, and mostly are kept at less than 0.83% range.