蚂蚁集团的金融创新不仅需要有利于股票市场投资者，还需要有利于整个社会。

拉至底部，阅读英文原文

蚂蚁科技集团股份有限公司（以下简称“蚂蚁集团”），一家以数字支付加上为其它金融服务提供数字化超市而闻名的中国金融科技企业集团，遇到了监管挫折。原定于11月5日在港交所和上交所的上市计划被中国监管部门暂缓。蚂蚁控股股东马云最近一次演讲对金融监管方式提出批评，在他看来监管对金融科技创新缺乏理解和支持。此次上市叫停显示了监管的权威、表达了对蚂蚁的不满，也算是对马云演讲的回应。

此次IPO堪称历史上规模最大，超过了此前IPO纪录保持者沙特阿美（去年12月募资294亿美元）的规模，也超过了蚂蚁的大哥阿里巴巴（2014年在纽约证券交易所上市筹集250亿美元）的规模。根据蚂蚁集团的IPO招股说明书，公司计划募资344亿美元（约占公司股份的11%）。蚂蚁集团的总市值预计为3,134亿美元，将位列中国上市公司第三，世界排名十二，超过目前全球市值最高的上市银行摩根大通。

如果重启IPO，蚂蚁还会打破世界纪录吗？如果暂缓上市伴随着对其商业活动新的监管限制，蚂蚁的市场价值注定会受到负面影响。但蚂蚁在其短暂的公司发展历程中多次展现出创造力和韧性。凭借其广受欢迎的数字支付App，蚂蚁已经成功扩展到理财、保险等一系列金融服务领域。除了目前各项业务的增长潜力，蚂蚁还有许多其他增长机会。

例如，蚂蚁基于大数据与程序可以为数字支付用户生成有效的信用风险评分，包括但不限于那些经常在线购物或销售的用户。如果能够获得监管部门批准的话，信用评分可以成为一项独立的新业务，形成为供应链企业、房东、银行和潜在雇主提供服务的创收项目。

海外扩张是另一个潜在的增长领域。与其在国内数字金融领域的龙头主导地位相比，它的海外业务确实只是“小蚂蚁”。以数字支付为例，支付宝海外的使用量只是其国内的0.5%。然而，凭借其强大的算法和专业技术，蚂蚁应该有能力在许多其他国家寻求到市场需求，特别是如果它能够赢得海外监管机构的信任，并借力阿里巴巴的国际扩张。

蚂蚁集团的发展也面临着许多阻力。首先，美国和印度最近对中国企业的运作与出口限制提醒人们，中国企业的海外发展最终是否成功可能取决于它无法控制的地缘政治动态。第二，或许更重要的是，中国国内的监管机构对蚂蚁集团能够在多大程度上发展壮大已有业务以及获取新业务的资格产生巨大影响。类似于美国和欧盟监管机构对待本国大型科技公司一样，中国监管者也担心蚂蚁集团在滥用其在数字支付领域近乎垄断的地位，以及它给金融稳定和数据隐私带来的不可预见的风险。

这些担忧必须与蚂蚁和金融科技创新给社会带来的价值放在一起权衡。金融创新是否一定为社会造福不能泛泛而谈，因为有一些创新可能拉大“技术富人”和“技术穷人”之间的差距。不过蚂蚁的实践表明，它是一股推动包容性发展的力量。蚂蚁已经使数以百万计的小微企业获得了*，这些企业此前因缺乏可抵押资产而无法*，其中包括了处于中国较贫穷、边缘地区的企业。蚂蚁集团还促进创业家中的性别平等。在线下创业者中，男性的比例是女性的三倍，而线上创业者的性别几乎是平等的，蚂蚁的*项目基于业绩、不分性别，间接帮助了大量的女性企业家们。

蚂蚁其实也是中国利率市场化改革进程中的一位无名英雄。在任何经济体中，利率和汇率都可能是最重要的两个金融价格。在金融科技革命之前，中国对储户支付的利率有一个上限（同时对*利率设定下限）。这意味着，家庭储蓄的回报率被人为压低至市场利率以下。有人说利率被压低可能是中国高储蓄的原因之一（在低利率背景下需要更多的储蓄才能达到一个给定的金额目标），也间接增加了经常账户的顺差。尽管以家庭储蓄支付市场利率将提高经济效率，并有可能减少中国的外部失衡，但是改革以实现这一结果很难，因为商业银行从低存款利率中受益从而缺乏动力去改变，而利率管制也阻止个别银行自行偏离现状。

2013年6月，蚂蚁（当时的“阿里金融”）推出了余额宝，改变了这一切。余额宝是一种使用门槛低、便捷灵活而又支付市场利率的货币市场基金。没有申购费或赎回费，而且投资起点低（1元门槛），这是成千上万的普通家庭从未享受过的金融服务，也让他们意识到并非只能容忍银行的低利率。在我与斯坦福大学Greg Buchak和北京大学胡佳胤的共同研究中，我们发现余额宝通过给银行施加竞争压力，迫使它们先后推出了投资门槛低、手续费低、而又支付市场利率的产品，实际上撬动了或助推了全国性的利率市场化改革。

如今，普通中国消费者享受的银行服务的质量和范围，在这场中国金融服务无声革命之前是很难想象的。蚂蚁集团悄无声息间接帮助推动了这场革命。除了对银行施加有益的竞争压力之外，蚂蚁集团还帮助许多银行扩大自己的业务，并通过合作的联合*协议提高效率。这些安排结合了银行的低资金成本优势和蚂蚁集团数据和算法驱动的风险和成本控制优势。通过一百多家合作伙伴，蚂蚁集团发现并介绍给银行许多有着良好信用的借款人，这些借款人以前银行是看不到的或者服务起来成本太贵。有意思的是，这些联合*的违约率通常低于银行自己的*项目。

蚂蚁发展带来的大部分正面社会效益是公司盈利活动的副产品。这不是坏事情，因为它使这些社会效益具有可持续性。蚂蚁集团的一大业务是个人*（或消费贷），它可以帮助家庭更好地应对突发的收入或支出冲击，比如家庭成员疾病或教育的支出。有一种担忧是，此类*也可能会导致某些不具备金融知识或能力的人承担过多的债务，或者加剧他们的“行为偏见”，从而造成社会不稳定。

然而，这些担忧往往没有系统的证据作为基础。因此，在这一领域进行更多的研究和评估将有助于确保蚂蚁和整体的金融科技创新，以一种不仅有利于买蚂蚁股票的投资者，而且有利于整个社会的方式取得进展。

Use Ant Group’s IPO Suspension to Reflect on Its Social and Market Valuations

Shang-Jin Wei

Editor-in-chiefofFudanFinancialReview

ProfessorofFinance and Ecnomics ofColumbiaUniversity

FormerChiefEconomistof Asian Development Bank

Ant Group, a Chinese FinTech conglomerate known for its digital payment plus a digital supermarket for other financial services, has met a regulatory setback - its simultaneous public listing on the Hong Kong and Shanghai Stock Exchanges originally scheduled for November 5 has just been suspended by Chinese regulators. The suspension is an assertion of authority and an expression of unhappiness by the regulators, possibly in response to a recent speech by Jack Ma, Ant’s controlling shareholder, who was critical of financial regulations that in his mind show insufficient understanding of and insufficient support for FinTech innovation.

The IPO was to be the largest in history, surpassing that of the previous IPO record holder Saudi Aramco ($29.4 billion when first listed last December), and Ant’s first cousin Alibaba ($25 billion on its New York Stock Exchange debut in 2014). Based on Ant Group’s IPO prospectus, the company aims to raise $34.4 billion (for about 11% of its shares). With a total market valuation projected at $313.4 billion, Ant would be ranked the third largest among Chinese listed companies and the 12th largest public company in the world, surpassing JPMorgan Chase, which is currently the most valuable publicly listed bank in the world.

Will Ant still break the world record if and when its IPO is resumed? If the suspension is accompanied by new regulatory restrictions on its business activities, its market valuation can certainly dampen, but Ant has also demonstrated creativity and tenacity many times in its short history. By leveraging the popularity of its digital payment App in China, it has expanded successfully into selling mutual funds, insurance products, and a range of other financial service products. Besides the growth potential in each of its current businesses, Ant has numerous other growth opportunities.

For example, Ant has in-house algorithms to generate informative scores on credit risks for digital-payment users, including but also extending beyond those who shop or sell regularly online. Credit scoring, when permitted by China’s regulatory authorities, can be a standalone new business with potential demands from supply-chain firms, landlords, banks, and prospective employers.

Overseas expansion is another potential growth area. Compared to the company’s dragon-sized dominance in domestic e-finance, it is still an ant outside of China. Take digital payment as an example, its overseas business volume is only 0.5% of its domestic volume. With its powerful algorithms and technical know-how, however, it should be able to find market demand in many other countries, especially if it can gain the trust of foreign regulators and piggyback on Alibaba’s own international expansion.

Ant still faces many potential headwinds. First, the United States and India’s recent restrictions on Chinese companies are reminders that its ultimate overseas success may depend on geopolitical dynamics beyond its control. Second, and more importantly, China’s own domestic regulators will have a huge impact on how much Ant can grow and expand into new businesses. Like US and EU regulators with respect to their own BigTech companies, Chinese authorities are concerned about Ant’s near-monopoly position in digital payments, as well as the unforeseen risks to financial stability and data privacy that it poses.

These concerns must be weighed against the value that the company and fintech innovations offer to society. One cannot make general statements as some innovations could widen a gap between technological haves and have-nots. In the case of Ant, however, it has demonstrated to be a force for financial inclusion in the economy. Its technology has made loans accessible to millions of small and micro enterprises that previously could not borrow, owing to a lack of collateralizable assets – including in China’s poorer, marginalized regions. Ant also promotes gender equality in entrepreneurship. While men outnumber women three-to-one among offline entrepreneurs, there is near gender parity among online entrepreneurs, and women-led firms are helped by Ant’s merit-based, gender-blind loan program.

Ant is also an unsung hero in liberalizing interest rates in China. Interest and exchange rates are arguably two of the most important prices in any economy, and before the fintech revolution, China imposed a cap on the interest rate paid to depositors (together with a floor on the lending interest rate), which meant that households were earning a return on their savings below the market interest rate. It is said that the low interest rate is one reason for the high savings rate in China(more savings are needed to achieve a given monetary target), which contributes to a large current account surplus. Although paying market interest rates on household savings would enhance economic efficiency and potentially reduce China’s external imbalances, reforms to achieve that result are difficult to implement, because commercial banks that benefit from low deposit interest rates have scant incentive to change, and interest rate regulation had prevented individual banks from deviating from the status quo.

Ant changed all of this in June 2013 when it introduced Yuebao, an easily accessible money-market fund that pays a market interest rate. By allowing for almost instantaneous purchase and redemption from its digital and a low starting investment (¥1), Yuebao offered millions of ordinary households a financial service never experienced in their economic life, making them realize that they need not tolerate the low interest rates of banks. In my own research (with Greg Buchak of Stanford University and Jiayin Hu of Peking University), we have found that Yuebao triggered a de facto financial liberalization across China, by putting pressure on banks to roll out their own low-entry barrier, low-cost, and market-rate-paying products.

Ordinary Chinese consumers now enjoy banking services of a quality and on a scale that would have been unthinkable before this silent revolution in the country’s financial services that Ant has help to facilitate. Beyond applying socially beneficial competitive pressure, Ant also helps many banks expand their own business and improve their efficiency through cooperative joint-lending agreements. These arrangements combine a bank’s low cost-of-capital advantage with Ant’s data- and algorithm-driven approach to risk and cost control. With 100 such partnerships in operation, Ant has discovered and delivered many creditworthy borrowers that were previously invisible to the banks and/or too expensive to serve. Better yet, the default rates on these loans are often lower than banks’ own lending programs.

Most of the social benefits stemming from Ant’s expansion come as a by-product of the company’s profit-seeking activities. This is not a bad thing as it makes them sustainable. A big line of Ant’s business is personal loans, which can help households better manage temporary income or expenditure shocks, say for illness or education. One concern is that greater availability of such loans could result in financially unsophisticated people taking on too much debt, or otherwise exacerbating their “behavioral biases,” thereby creating greater financial instability.

However, these concerns tend not to be based on systematic evidence. More research and evaluations in this area thus would help to ensure that Ant – and fintech innovation in general – can progress in ways that are good not just for financial investors but for society at large.

* 作者魏尚进现任复旦大学泛海国际金融学院学术访问教授、哥伦比亚大学终身讲席教授。同时担任美国国民经济研究局（NBER）中国经济研究组创始主任，美国布鲁金斯学会（Brookings Institution）高级研究员。曾任亚洲开发银行（ADB）首位华人首席经济学家、经济研究与区域合作局局长，国际货币基金组织（IMF）贸易与投资处处长，世界银行（WB）顾问等职务。本文编译：潘琦。

编辑：颜回