HNA Group, a member of Global Fortune 500, is a Hainan-headquartered conglomerate that sprouted from the aviation business into other logistics and transportation-related industries. HNA Usolv is the Group's solution provider for cross-border ecommerce companies.
HNA Usolv owns entities providing an e-commerce platform, cross-border payments processing and big data solutions. Finally, the company owns Bohai Credit, which received an enterprise credit rating license from the PBOC in May 2016. It is the latter arm of Usolv that will collaborate with the global credit information player.
CRIF is headquarted in Italy and specializes in 'credit information systems, business information and credit management solutions', according to the company's website. The company is collaborating with Bohai Credit to create an information platform that will support decision making for supply chain financing. The platform will leverage HNA Groups logistics data coupled with HNA Usolv's cross-border commerce data to develop enterprise credit scoring.
The platform's value to SMEs is the lowered financing cost that it brings. Smaller firms often don't have a sufficient credit history, so banks charge them more for having to operate in the dark. By mining proprietary data the platform reduces the information asymmetry between banks and small companies involved in cross-border trade.
The agreement, along with other collaboration announcements from international credit scoring firms in the last couple of years, shows that Chinese companies are open to work with foreign credit technology companies, especially in areas where they can share knowledge and expertise.