Complete credit approval in 3 to 5 seconds, "AI + Finance" solves new consumption challenges

Robots selling fragrances, essential oils, and other products on the streets

Reporter Fu Le from Beijing reports for this newspaper (chinatimes.net.cn)

Recently, the China Development Forum and the Zhongguancun Forum have been held successively, focusing on hot topics such as expanding domestic demand, financial empowerment, and AI assisting in enhancing and expanding consumption, outlining a blueprint for the high-quality development of the consumption market in the new stage.

The “14th Five-Year Plan” outlines the establishment and improvement of a management mechanism that adapts to new business formats, new models, and new scenarios in consumption. It aims to expand financial supply in the consumption sector and create a number of new consumption scenarios with wide influence and visibility.

On March 29, Lexin CEO Xiao Wenjie told reporters from the “Huaxia Times” that China’s economic growth has entered a critical stage of transformation from “investment-driven” to “consumption + innovation.” There is a need to continuously improve the institutional design that promotes consumption, focusing on expanding service consumption, new consumption, and rural consumption, while stabilizing residents’ income expectations, improving the income distribution mechanism, and increasing financial support to enhance residents’ consumption capacity and willingness.

Supporting New Service Consumption

During the “14th Five-Year” period, China’s consumption market size has maintained its position as the second largest in the world, with the total retail sales of consumer goods breaking through 40 trillion yuan and 50 trillion yuan. When adjusted for purchasing power parity, it has already become the largest in the world.

However, the per capita consumption level in China still lags behind that of developed countries, leaving ample room for upgrading the consumption structure. Han Wenxiu, deputy director in charge of daily operations at the Central Financial Committee Office, stated at the China Development Forum that China’s super-large market advantages have yet to be fully realized. There is huge potential for expanding consumption, especially in service consumption. In the coming period, it is essential to steadily increase the contribution of consumption to economic growth and promote the formation of economic development models that are more led by domestic demand, driven by consumption, and characterized by endogenous growth.

As an important direction for consumption upgrading, new service consumption has become a key area for policy efforts. Wang Yiming, former deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, believes that it is necessary to support new service consumption, increase the proportion of public service spending, and focus on promoting institutional openness in the service industry.

New Consumption: Trendy Toys

Currently, consumers are increasingly willing to pay for various new experiences, and China’s new consumption formats continue to diversify. There are self-indulgent consumption categories such as trendy toys, new tea beverages, pet economy, traditional gold, and fragrances, as well as experiential consumption like camping, light therapy, and immersive entertainment, along with technology consumption in smart homes and AI consumer electronics, as well as age-friendly products and travel nursing. Overall, the consumption market is upgrading from physical consumption to experience services and emotional value consumption.

In recent years, China has implemented a “combination punch” to promote consumption, increasing the supply of high-quality consumer goods and deeply carrying out policies for trade-in replacements, continuously releasing potential for domestic demand. The 2026 government work report clearly identifies “striving to build a strong domestic market” as this year’s top government work task, which includes implementing actions to improve the quality of service consumption for the benefit of the people, creating a number of new consumption scenarios with wide influence and visibility, and accelerating the cultivation of new growth points in consumption, making the strategic position of boosting consumption more prominent.

From an external perspective, the economic recovery is weak, with increased fluctuations in the international market and growing risks and challenges. Against this backdrop, expanding domestic demand and boosting consumption is not only an important support for stabilizing the economic fundamentals but also a key measure to enhance economic resilience and seize the initiative in development.

AI Empowering Financial Innovation

In the context of boosting consumption, the deep application of artificial intelligence in the financial sector has become a focal point of discussion across various fields. Industry organizations such as Qifu Technology believe that AI-driven financial services are helping to expand the coverage of inclusive finance and have become an important infrastructure connecting supply and consumption, promoting the enhancement and expansion of the consumption market.

The core value of AI technology lies in breaking down the information barriers of traditional financial services, allowing more information that was previously difficult to quantify to become identifiable and assessable, thereby helping financial institutions more accurately meet the needs of the real economy, especially for small and micro operators who are directly linked to supply and consumption, which is crucial for the quality of supply in the consumption market.

Traditional financial services are limited by risk control models and information acquisition capabilities, making it difficult to comprehensively cover small and micro entities. However, AI-enabled intelligent risk control and precise credit granting services effectively reduce service thresholds and operational costs. By improving the financing efficiency of small and micro operators, it stimulates supply-side vitality and injects sustained momentum into the consumption market.

A relevant person from Qifu Technology told reporters that AI is driving the financial industry to accelerate its shift from scale-driven to quality-driven approaches, with the core value of financial technology platforms shifting from purely efficiency enhancement to improving risk identification and resource allocation capabilities within a compliance framework. Currently, Qifu Technology has implemented AI technology in multiple links such as risk identification, intelligent customer service, and operational decision-making, while continuously exploring AI’s application potential in complex financial scenarios.

For example, in the consumer finance sector, through the use of artificial intelligence and other technologies, Haier Consumer Finance can complete credit approval in 3 to 5 seconds. When consumers choose home appliances in specialty stores, they achieve a connection between “national subsidies + corporate subsidies” through UnionPay Cloud Quick Payment. Their Smart Home installment service, using an industrial interest subsidy model, offers interest-free installments to benefit consumers, covering refrigerators, washing machines, air conditioners, smart locks, etc., activating the potential for home appliance renewal consumption. In addition to home appliance scenarios, Haier Consumer Finance has also partnered with drone training institutions to offer interest-free installment services for drone training through interest subsidies, further releasing potential for diverse new consumption.

The financial scene needs to handle a vast amount of high-frequency, low-latency tasks every day, quickly identifying intentions, extracting key information, retrieving and ranking, etc. These tasks require high concurrency, rapid response, and high precision. Traditional general-purpose reasoning large models are powerful, but in these scenarios, they are like “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut,” which is costly, slow to respond, and wastes resources. At the Zhongguancun Forum, Ant Group’s Ant Technology launched the Bailin Enterprise Edition financial large model, which boasts a reasoning speed 100% faster than general models with the same capabilities and reduces the hardware costs for processing the same task volume, lowering costs and improving efficiency for financial institutions.

The core demand for AI in the financial industry is to balance high response speed and high cost-effectiveness under the premise of professionalism, rigor, compliance, and safety. Zhang Peng, general manager of the Ant Technology large model technology innovation department, stated that large parameter models perform better in complex reasoning and deep analysis, while small parameter models have lower latency and higher cost-effectiveness in high-frequency small task scenarios. The industry needs a solution that combines large and small models to more efficiently and cost-effectively solve real-world problems.

Editor: Feng Yingzi Chief Editor: Zhang Zhiwei