Anchoring "Investment in People" Banks Race to Tap "One-Person Company" New Blue Ocean

Ask AI · How do banks balance innovation and risk management in OPC services?

China Economic Journalists Zhang Manyou Beijing Report

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Financial Support Moving Toward Innovation

Editor’s Note / From the Central Financial Work Conference prioritizing technological finance as the top of the “Five Major Articles,” to the “14th Five-Year Plan” outline dedicating a special chapter to cultivating and expanding emerging and future industries, explicitly proposing “building a technological financial system compatible with technological innovation,” financial support has been assigned a new historical mission. More financial resources are accelerating toward the field of technological innovation. This series of reports will decode how the financial industry precisely aligns with the major tasks of the “14th Five-Year Plan,” using frontline cases to convey policy signals, innovative examples to stabilize market expectations, and providing replicable, reference-worthy “moving toward innovation” solutions to support new productive forces.

“At the moment the loan was received, I felt much more at ease,” recalled Wu Yang, founder of Nanjing Dream Certainly Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “Dream Certainly Tech”). From the early days of university entrepreneurship with limited computing power and little attention, to now being part of the OPC (One-Person Company) community with computing subsidies and resource connections, and with the injection of financial “fresh water,” this “one-person company” has been able to operate lightly and grow rapidly.

With the rapid development of digital platforms, AI tools, and flexible employment ecosystems, a large number of knowledge-based, technical, and creative individuals are engaging in entrepreneurship in the form of OPCs, becoming an important force to activate market vitality and cultivate new productive forces. Facing this emerging group, financial institutions such as Jiangsu Bank (600919.SH) and Nanjing Bank (601009.SH) are breaking traditional service boundaries, launching customized financial products and services, so that “single-person entrepreneurs” are no longer fighting alone.

Interestingly, OPC-type companies tend to be small in scale, with volatile cash flows and scarce collateral assets. These are not the typical “target customers” banks previously focused on. Why, in just a few months, have many banks simultaneously targeted this group and even launched “instant approval quick loans” products? When financial services extend into this blue ocean, what risks need to be carefully managed?

Seizing the “Super Individual” Market

The core feature of OPCs is an extremely lightweight organizational form, with a high dependence on digital tools. Gao Zhengyang, a special researcher at Su Commercial Bank, analyzed that OPC entrepreneurs rely on AI tools and platform ecosystems to conduct operations, creating value through content production, software development, data services, and other diverse methods.

Wang Xi, a financial industry consultant at Analysys Qianfan, told China Business Journal that OPCs, with their “single-person” model, form distinct characteristics such as light assets, high efficiency, strong flexibility, vertical technology focus, and “people” as the core asset. Their capital needs are often small, frequent, and urgent. However, traditional finance mainly serves large companies, focusing on fixed asset collateral and lacking a comprehensive credit evaluation system for intangible assets like technological achievements, personal abilities, and business orders. Additionally, cumbersome approval processes and long disbursement cycles make it difficult to meet OPCs’ urgent funding needs.

Take Dream Certainly Tech as an example. The company established an OPC community at the Mofa College in Jianye High-tech Zone, Nanjing, at the end of 2025, and successfully entered a software development project for a scientific research institute, achieving revenue breakthroughs. However, needs for technological upgrades, team expansion, and data collection have created more urgent funding gaps, trapping this knowledge- and algorithm-based light asset company in a traditional credit system that struggles to provide credit.

Wu Yang said, “The company is in a rapid development stage of R&D and project advancement, and the continuity of funds must match the pace of technological upgrades and market expansion.”

After understanding the company’s actual situation, Jiangsu Bank’s Nanjing branch, in cooperation with Jiangsu Province Science and Technology Financing Guarantee Co., Ltd., quickly intervened, establishing a dedicated service team, opening a green approval channel, breaking traditional credit logic, focusing on sci-tech innovation attributes, and using models like the “Five-Dimensional Portrait” credit model and “SuChuang Points Guarantee” evaluation model to achieve instant approval and quick loans. Within five working days, the entire process of business acceptance, document review, guarantee issuance, and loan disbursement was completed.

How to break traditional financial service boundaries and shift the core logic of OPC financial services from “making a loan” to “serving a company”? Enabled by digital technology, Jiangsu Bank leverages the big data advantages of the SuYin JinGuanJia platform to launch exclusive financing products for OPCs, breaking reliance on collateral, and using industry trends, core technology, order information, and innovation points as credit basis to achieve instant approval, flexible borrowing, and repayment, truly turning technology into credit and credit into development funds.

Dream Certainly Tech is one of the beneficiaries of OPC, and Jiangsu Bank is just one of many banks deploying OPC.

Among state-owned banks, Bank of Communications (601328.SH) Suzhou branch has launched the “OPC Entrepreneur Talent Loan,” a branch-specific financial product targeting OPC talents starting businesses in Suzhou. Among city commercial banks, Nanjing Bank has officially launched the “OPC Tongxin Plan,” quickly landing its first deal. This plan focuses on the “light assets, strong innovation” characteristics of relevant companies, emphasizing “human + computing power” as core development factors, relying on credit products like “Computing Power Loan” and “Xin Talent,” and building a full lifecycle service system through “investment-loan linkage + ecosystem empowerment” to address financing bottlenecks and service pain points during OPC growth.

Not only is product launch fast, but processing speed is also quick. Hailan Intelligent Technology (Qingdao) Co., Ltd. received its OPC business license from the administrative approval hall in the afternoon, and by evening, successfully opened a basic corporate account at Pudong Development Bank’s Qingdao branch.

It is worth noting that OPCs, centered on “people,” with light assets and volatile cash flows, are not the typical “target customers” banks previously focused on. Why are banks densely deploying in this area?

“A reliance on AI-driven OPC organizational forms is innovative, but banks’ credit judgment logic has not fundamentally changed,” a person from a state-owned bank’s investment banking department told China Business Journal. “No matter if it’s a large group of thousands or a single-person company, the core evaluation remains the stability of the business model and cash flow rhythm. However, for OPCs using AI to replace some roles, banks will increase assessments of AI training levels and ‘human efficiency,’ while still paying attention to traditional indicators like financial statements and payment/receipt rhythms.”

Wang Xi believes that banks’ willingness to quickly identify and actively serve OPCs results from the combined influence of policies, strategy, and technology. On the policy side, many local governments have introduced supportive policies that create favorable conditions for bank involvement; strategically, banks see OPCs as micro carriers of “new productive forces” in the AI era and future “unicorns,” proactively investing in the future to lock in high-growth potential clients’ lifetime value; technologically, the maturity of big data and AI enables banks to convert previously hard-to-quantify “soft information” such as intellectual property, platform value, and founder credit into reliable credit evaluation indicators, allowing for sustainable, precise financial services for this light-asset, highly volatile customer group.

Multi-Dimensional Efforts to Build a Defense Line

As banks extend their service reach into the OPC group and inject growth momentum, the inherent operational weaknesses and legal risks of this group also surface, becoming key concerns in financial services.

Wu Di, a financial lawyer at Beijing Leishi (Futian District) Law Firm, told China Business Journal that the core legal weakness of OPCs lies in the high risk of piercing the corporate veil (i.e., “lifting the corporate curtain”). Due to highly single-shareholder structures and governance mechanisms, and lack of internal checks, companies are prone to commingling personal and corporate accounts, personal expenses and corporate expenditures, and financial record chaos. According to Article 63 of the Company Law, shareholders are jointly liable for company debts. If the company fails, banks face multiple difficulties, including: unclear creditor recovery targets, difficulty in clearly defining and seizing mixed assets, and the potential failure of traditional guarantees like personal guarantees, since the responsibility assets are commingled. Judicial enforcement becomes complex, requiring banks to first prove the piercing of the corporate veil, consuming time and judicial resources, and often resulting in ineffective recovery due to limited clear assets.

Furthermore, core assets of OPCs—such as source code, social media accounts, and digital assets—face legal challenges when used as collateral.

Wu Di further explained that the difficulty lies in the systemic lack of legal recognition, publicity, and realization mechanisms. First, rights attribution is complex: source code may involve disputes over work-for-hire or commissioned development; social media accounts have both property and personal attributes, with ownership often belonging to platforms, and users only holding limited usage rights; data assets’ property rights are not clearly defined legally. Second, establishing effective security interests is difficult: China’s Civil Code specifies certain pledge rights, but these do not directly cover such new assets. While parties can agree on “non-typical collateral,” there is no unified registration or publicity platform (e.g., the People’s Bank of China’s movable property registration system’s effectiveness for such assets is unclear), resulting in collateral rights that cannot effectively oppose third parties, leaving bank claims at the contractual level. Third, valuation and realization face practical obstacles: these assets’ value depends heavily on operational capacity, market trends, and technological iteration, with high volatility and no standardized valuation methods; in case of default, courts face “execution difficulties,” such as how to freeze accounts, evaluate assets, or sell assets on the market (e.g., forcibly transferring account control may violate platform rules and lack bidders), with no clear operational procedures, making it hard to convert collateral into actual repayment funds.

Faced with these risks and opportunities, how to balance innovative services with risk control and implement precise measures is key to breaking through.

Gao Zhengyang believes that from a risk management perspective, banks need to develop more refined strategies. First, digital tools can be used to build a more granular risk identification system, relying on platform transaction data, cash flow data, operational activity, and other multi-dimensional information for dynamic credit assessment, improving understanding of actual business conditions. Second, in product design, small, dispersed, and revolving credit strategies can be adopted, strictly controlling single-client risk exposure to reduce overall risk.

Additionally, implementing tiered customer management and phased credit mechanisms is crucial. Wang Xi suggests that for OPCs driven by technology or content creation, differentiated credit limits and interest rates should be applied. Meanwhile, banks should shift from merely providing loans to offering full-cycle support, including financial management guidance, compliance counseling, and industry resource connection, helping improve growth quality, reduce financial risks, and cultivate long-term high-quality client relationships for mutual benefit.