香港零售貸款業小額貸款的大抱負

The pungent smell of fried squid on sticks wafts into the chill humid air of Hong Kong’s Sheung Wan district. Here, in a nondescript of¬fice building alongside traditional Chinese medicine shops selling deer horn and dried caterpillar, WeLabco-founder Simon Loong hopes to play a significant role in dragging Hong Kong’s retail lending sector into the digital era.

香港上環(Sheung Wan)寒冷潮溼的空氣中飄着一股炸魷魚串的刺鼻氣味，賣鹿茸和幹蟲草的傳統中藥店旁坐落着一棟不起眼的辦公樓。在這棟樓裏辦公的WeLab聯合創始人龍沛智(Simon Loong)期望，自己的公司能在引領香港零售貸款業進入數字時代方面發揮重要作用。

The target market is small to midsized borrowers, who have traditionally had few sources from which to obtain funds conveniently and affordably in Hong Kong. Even online applications to commercial banks can involve a branch visit, while micro financing companies, which lend to low-income consumers, charge high rates to compensate for the inevitably less rigorous credit checks and higher default rates.

該公司瞄準的市場是中小借貸者。在香港，這類借貸者一向沒有什麼渠道方便而廉價地獲取資金。即使是向商業銀行在線申請貸款，可能也需要去分支行面談，而面向低收入顧客放貸的小額融資公司，則收取高息來彌補肯定不那麼嚴格的信用審覈和更高的違約率帶來的損失。

WeLab aims to be faster, cheaper and more convenient. “Internet finance is about providing efficient alternatives,” rather than identifying “new needs”, says Mr Loong. It has particular users in mind: “We design our product for tech-savvy young consumers.” These are people who want to avoid having to go to a bank branch and to avoid being subjected to cross-selling.

WeLab的目標是更快、更廉價、更方便。龍沛智表示，“互聯網金融的宗旨在於提供高效的替代品”，而不是甄別“新需求”。它着眼於特定的用戶羣體。“我們設計的產品是面向精通科技的年輕顧客。”這類顧客不想爲了申貸而不得不跑銀行網點，也不想成爲交叉銷售(cross-selling)的對象。

A former commercial banker with 15 years’ experience at Citibank and Standard Chartered, Mr Loong set up WeLab in 2013. The smart-suited, soft-spoken CEO is speaking in a small, glass walled room in a corner of the company’s 2,000 sq ft head office, that barely fits a desk and two chairs. Sitting next to a window covered with notes scribbled in marker pen, he talks persuasively about his desire to offer “attractive alternatives” to borrowers, especially those who struggle to obtain funds from lenders that use traditional risk-checking tools.

龍沛智曾是一名商業銀行家，在花旗銀行(Citibank)和渣打銀行(Standard Chartered)總共效力了15年，他在2013年創立了WeLab。這名穿着得體、說話溫和的WeLab行政總裁，在一個玻璃牆小房間裏接受採訪，這個房間位於該公司佔地2000平方英尺的總部辦公室的一角，面積小得勉強放下一張桌子和兩把椅子。他的座位旁有一扇窗戶，窗上貼滿了便條，上面用記號筆龍飛鳳舞地寫着什麼。他令人信服地談到，他渴望將“有吸引力的替代品”提供給借貸者，尤其是那些很難從使用傳統風險評估工具的貸款機構獲得資金的借貸者。

WeLab has developed its own software, WeDefend, designed to enable rapid credit assessment without compromising on accurate pricing. Mr Loong is reluctant to reveal details, but he does say that WeDefend relies on information provided by the customer as well as data published online.

WeLab開發了自有軟件WeDefend，該軟件旨在幫助WeLab在不影響準確定價的前提下快速完成信用評估。龍沛智不願透露細節，但他明確表示WeDefend依賴於顧客提供的信息以及網上公佈的數據。

For instance, information garnered from search engines such as Google and Baidu can help to verify identity. Still, weeding out bad apples is not as simple as counting Facebook friends, he says: “Thieves and good people both have friends.” If a customer is reluctant to share personal information, “they don’t get the money”. WeLend, the flagship product, has so far experienced no fraud on its loan book, although it has encountered fraudulent applicants.

例如，從搜索引擎如谷歌(Google)和百度收集的信息能夠幫助驗證身份。不過，篩除“爛蘋果”可不像統計Facebook好友那麼簡單，龍沛智表示：“盜賊也好，好人也罷，都是有朋友的。”如果顧客不願分享個人信息，“他們就得不到錢”。該公司的旗艦產品WeLend雖然遇到過不誠實的申請者，但到目前爲止從未被成功騙貸。

In the early days WeLab itself struggled to persuade service providers of its legitimacy: “Hong Kong is unused to start-ups,” Mr Loong says. Without a history landlords were reluctant to provide premises or banks to open ac¬counts. “You need a one-year trading record, but how can you [get started and] grow without these things?” Mr Loong says.

營業初期，WeLab花了很大力氣來說服服務提供商相信該公司有存在的道理。龍沛智說：“香港還不習慣於接納創業型企業”。如果一家企業沒有營業記錄，房東不願向它提供辦公場所，銀行也不願爲它開立賬戶。“你得有一年的營業記錄。但沒有上面這些東西，你怎能（起步並）成長起來呢？”

Funding was not such a problem. The first round of capital raising in 2013 garnered $2m from friends and family, beating the target of $1.3m. Then last year some big name investors injected $20m in equity: Tom Group, a Hong Kong listed media company that is 36.7 per cent-owned by Li Ka-shing’s flagship conglomerates Hutchison Whampoa and Cheung Kong, and Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital were among them.

資金方面倒沒有遇到這樣的問題。第一輪融資是在2013年，從朋友和家人那裏融來了200萬美元，比130萬美元的目標要高。接着在去年，一些大名鼎鼎的投資者通過入股注資了2000萬美元，其中包括TOM集團(Tom Group)和硅谷的紅杉資本(Sequoia Capital)。TOM集團是一家在港上市的媒體公司，李嘉誠(Li Ka-shing)的旗艦企業集團長江和記實業(CK Hutchison)持有該公司36.7%的股份。

The journey to WeLab’s conception began in a Stanford Graduate School of Business dormitory room in 2010. Mr Loong had taken time to help his fiancée settle in for her MBA. As he flicked through her coursework, he realised further study might benefit him too. He requested a sabbatical and enrolled for a Masters in Science and Management, also at Stanford, relocating from his home in Hong Kong.

WeLab構想的形成過程始於2010年斯坦福大學商學院(Stanford Graduate School of Business)的一間宿舍。當時龍沛智的未婚妻來這裏讀MBA，龍沛智在幫她整理宿舍。他快速翻閱了下未婚妻的課程作業，意識到進一步的學習可能對自己也有幫助。於是他申請了學術休假，離開香港的家搬到這裏，進入斯坦福大學攻讀科學與管理碩士學位。

The course changed his understanding of finance as well as his own ambitions. “I discovered how small my world was. It was just people who wanted to move money around and that’s it.” His studies introduced him to professionals from a variety of backgrounds and in¬spired him to look beyond a conventional career in finance. Becoming CEO of a bank — the “best I could do, if all the stars had realigned” — no longer seemed like “fun”. His studies had highlighted that financial services were ripe for disruption by technology: the crisis of 2008 had presented an opportunity for new models of consumer banking. He set about launching WeLab.

課程改變了他對金融和自身抱負的理解。“我發現我的圈子太小了，就是些想推動資金轉來轉去的人，然後就沒別的了。”這段學習讓他認識了各種背景的專業人士，並鼓舞他將目光投向常規的金融職業生涯之外。在他看來，在一家銀行作首席執行官的夢想似乎已不再有趣（他以前曾認爲，“如果發生奇蹟，我最想做的就是成爲一家銀行的首席執行官”）。這段學習讓他深刻意識到，用科技去顛覆金融服務業的時機已經成熟：2008年的危機提供了一個建立消費銀行業務新模式的機會。他開始着手創立WeLab。

Its growth has been encouraging, he says. In the fourth quarter of last year, loan applications at WeLend quadrupled year on year. By mid-April 2015, WeLend had received re¬quests for a total of nearly $170m, up 40 per cent from the end of 2014; the average loan is about $10,000, the maximum $65,000.

他表示，WeLab的發展一直令人鼓舞。去年第四季度，WeLend的貸款申請同比翻了兩番。到2015年4月中旬，WeLend收到的申請額總計近1.7億美元，相比2014年底增長了40%；貸款額平均爲1萬美元左右，最大一筆爲6.5萬美元。

Mr Loong declines to reveal the size of the loan book, but as WeLab’s confidence in its credit risk evaluation has improved, approvals have risen from 10-15 per cent of applications to 20-25 per cent. This is un¬like¬ly to rise much more: taking on riskier customers might need debt collection, raising costs and altering the online-only model.

龍沛智不願透露貸款賬目的大小，但隨着WeLab對其信用風險評估的信心逐步提升，批貸比例已從10%到15%升至20%到25%。這個比例不太可能再上升很多：接受風險更高的顧客可能需要追債、提高成本和改變只做線上業務的模式。

Hong Kong has demonstrated the efficacy of WeLab’s credit assessment technology, so the company is expanding to mainland China. The mainland site, Wolaidai (“I will lend”), operates a peer-to-peer model, which links small scale lenders and borrowers, limiting WeLab’s capital commitment to China’s $40bn unregulated online lending market. Still, risk assessment remains rigorous to ensure healthy growth: “The platform will get destroyed if individual lenders are blowing up,” says Mr Loong.

WeLab信用評估技術的有效性已在香港得到證明，因此該公司正將業務擴大到中國內地。該公司在內地的網站“我來貸”()是基於P2P模式，爲小額貸款人和小額借款人牽線搭橋，這將WeLab的出資承諾限定在了內地的400億美元無監管在線借貸市場。儘管如此，該公司仍堅持嚴格的風險評估，以確保能夠健康發展。龍沛智表示：“如果個人貸款者搞砸了，這個平臺也會完蛋。”

In order to test its credit assessment technology on a homogeneous group, Wolaidai limited its initial foray to student loans of no more than Rmb6,000 (about $965). One advantage of this group, says Mr Loong, is that the students have “a lot of data online”; a maximum 12-month term also ensured that repayment became due before graduation.

爲了測試其針對某一同質羣體的信用評估技術，“我來貸”將最初的業務限定爲助學貸款，每筆最多6000元人民幣（約合965美元）。龍沛智表示，這個羣體的一大優勢是，學生們有“大量的在線數據”；最長12個月的還款期限也確保了學生畢業前要還清貸款。

Starting in Guangdong, Wolaidai has now expanded beyond students, and Mr Loong expects the China loan book to surpass that of Hong Kong within months. About 70 of the company’s 100 staff are in mainland China, with the rest in Hong Kong and India.

“我來貸”在廣東起步，現在的服務對象已不僅限於學生。龍沛智預期該公司在中國內地的貸款額會在數月內超越香港。該公司的100名員工有近70名在中國內地，其餘在香港和印度。

Wolaidai is developing new growth op¬portunities. Last month, it launched a website with Chinese smartphone manufacturer Coolpad to facilitate instalment payments for mobile phone purchases. Aware of the value of “owning” the customer, WeLab does not simply provide credit checking software, the site is co-branded and the revenues are shared with the vendor partner.

“我來貸”正在拓展新的增長機會。今年3月，它推出了與中國智能手機制造商酷派(Coolpad)合建的一個網站，方便購買手機的用戶分期付款。WeLab認識到了“擁有”顧客的價值，它除了提供信用評估軟件外，還爲該網站冠以聯合品牌，收入則與供貨商合作伙伴分享。

Back in WeLab’s Hong Kong neighbourhood, the traditional Chinese medicine shops are being replaced on the fringes by French cafés and American diners. Mr Loong will be hoping WeLab can have a similar transformative impact on traditional banking services.

回過頭來看看WeLab香港總部所在的社區，街角的傳統中藥店正被法式咖啡館和美式小餐館取代。龍沛智肯定希望WeLab能對傳統銀行業服務產生類似的革命性影響。

Hiring: The skills puzzle

招聘：技能拼圖

Finding staff has been one of WeLab’s big challenges. Finance professionals, the earliest recruits, were sceptical about leaving their secure roles in big organisations, so coaxing the first employees to join required a lot of persuasion, including sharing equity, says Simon Loong, who would not disclose the size of his own stake.

招兵買馬一直是WeLab面臨的一大挑戰。龍沛智表示，該公司要招的第一批人，也就是那些金融專業人士，對離開他們在大公司的安穩位子加入該公司持懷疑態度，所以勸誘這批人加入要做大量的說服工作，包括分給他們WeLab的股份。龍沛智不願透露自己持有多少股份。

In addition, WeLab could not find enough professionals with the right balance of finance and technology skills. After the first locally recruited technology partner did not work out, WeLab hired a chief technology officer from Singapore and programmers in India.

此外，WeLab找不到足夠多的、金融和技術兩方面技能都不錯的專業人才。由於在香港當地招到的首個技術合夥人不太理想，WeLab從新加坡聘請了一名首席技術官，在印度招聘了程序員。

In the early days, quarterly trips to Hong Kong helped the India team to integrate with the rest of the company. But later, weekly trips for the Singapore chief technology officer took their toll and the role has now been split between a head of technology in Hong Kong and another in China.

一開始，這些人每季度到香港出差一次，這有助於印度團隊融入整個公司。但後來，新加坡的首席技術官每週一次的出差讓公司付出了不小的成本，該崗位的職責現在被分爲兩半，由香港的一名技術主管和中國內地的一名技術主管分別負責。

Mr Loong says one seasoned equity investor advised him: “You don’t always find the perfect piece of the puzzle first time.”

龍沛智表示，一名股票投資老手曾勸他道：“你不總是一下子就能找到那塊最合適的拼圖零片。”