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QINGDAO TODAY
在线翻译:
szdaily -> Business -> 
New rules for pawn shop lending mulled
    2019-03-14  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

THE country’s banking and insurance regulator is drafting new rules that will toughen oversight of the pawn shop lending sector, Bloomberg News quoted sources familiar with the matter as saying yesterday.

Unlike their small-dollar-lending, used-guitar-selling peers in America, pawn shops in Asia’s largest economy have become a major force in the shadow finance industry. They lent the equivalent of US$43 billion in 2017, often to small businesses and at much higher interest rates than banks. The number of Chinese pawn shops has doubled since 2010 to more than 8,500 and their average loan size exceeds US$26,000, versus around US$100 in the United States.

The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission’s (CBIRC) inclusive financing division is drafting the new rules after taking over jurisdiction of pawn shops from the Ministry of Commerce last year, the sources said. One of the rules may increase the minimum capital requirement for pawn shops from its current level of 3 million yuan, the sources said.

China’s pawn shops are often used by small business owners to access high-cost funds for working capital. More than half of pawn shop loans extended in 2017 were backed by real estate. And unlike typical bank loans, borrowers don’t need to disclose how the money will be used.

More than a third of China’s pawn shops were loss-making in the first two months of 2018 and their overdue loan ratio exceeded 13 percent amid rising competition with online lenders, official data show.

A typical loan in Shanghai comes with an interest rate of about 2 percent a month, or 24 percent annually, compared with the benchmark one-year lending rate of 4.35 percent. Pawn shops typically lend up to 40 percent of the value of an apartment pledged as collateral, renewing the loan every six months.(SD-Agencies)

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