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.
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.
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。
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.
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。
Use Ant Group’s IPO Suspension to Reflect on Its Social and Market Valuations
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.
Shang-Jin Wei
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。
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.
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.
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。
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.