The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, together with the Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission, issued an implementation plan for high-quality development of science and technology finance in the banking and insurance sectors. The plan sets out 20 measures across seven workstreams aimed at upgrading service mechanisms, product offerings, specialist capabilities and risk controls to increase financial support for technological innovation and its industrial application. Key measures include encouraging financial institutions to refine internal governance for tech finance, delegate appropriate authority to specialist units, adjust performance assessment and incentives, and increase tolerance for non-performing loans on lending to technology firms. On products and pilots, banks are guided to expand unsecured and medium-to-long-term lending to tech companies with more flexible pricing and repayment terms, including allowing working capital loan tenors to be extended up to five years for borrowers with long cashflow recovery cycles; insurers are guided to improve risk-sharing and offer insurance covering the full innovation lifecycle, including for talent-related risks. The plan also calls for orderly expansion of the financial asset investment company equity investment pilot to more eligible regions, supports qualifying commercial banks to initiate the establishment of such companies, deepens pilots for long-term insurance funds investment reforms including insurer-sponsored private securities funds investing in equities for long holding periods, and advances pilots for tech-company M&A loans and intellectual property finance. Additional measures promote “loan plus external direct investment” cooperation, stronger venture-capital support, bank underwriting services for eligible tech-company bond issuance, and greater investment allocation to innovation-linked bonds and securitisation products, alongside digital tools, guarantee and reinsurance-based risk sharing, information-sharing infrastructure, and strengthened third-party valuation and technical risk assessment services.

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