1 18 10 18, the people's bank of China and the China banking regulatory commission revised and promulgated the administrative measures on acceptance, discount and rediscount of commercial bills (hereinafter referred to as the measures). These Measures shall come into force on June 5438+ 10/day, 2023. On the same day that the Measures were issued, the Shanghai Bills Exchange also issued the Operating Rules for Information Disclosure of Commercial Bills.
Compared with the Interim Measures for the Administration of Acceptance, Discount and Re-discount of Commercial Bills (1997), this method is the first comprehensive revision after a lapse of 25 years, and the old version of the word "temporary" has been removed from the name, which is called "new bill regulations" by the industry.
"The previous version of the Interim Measures focused on business management, and the new version of the Measures focused on standardized management." Xiao Xiaohe, executive director of Jiuyin Bill Research Institute of Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, believes that this shows that the bill market has developed into an indispensable tool for financial markets and serving the real economy.
In recent years, the domestic economic and financial situation and bill market environment have changed. The Measures clarify the nature and classification of relevant bills, strengthen the information disclosure and credit restraint mechanism, and more importantly, strengthen the risk control of the bill industry, and put forward targeted management requirements for the main problems existing in the bill market in recent years.
What concerns the market is that many amendments to the Measures are beneficial to small and medium-sized enterprises. Among them, the long-awaited desire of small and medium-sized enterprises to shorten the term of bills has been realized. In addition, another issue discussed by the market is that the Measures put forward two risk control indicators, namely, acceptance balance and margin balance, which will regulate the behavior of market participants from the perspective of risk.
The maximum period of commercial bills is shortened to six months.
The longest term of commercial bills in China has experienced a dynamic change process. According to the Payment and Settlement Measures issued by the People's Bank of China 1997, the longest term of a commercial bill is 6 months, but this is generally used for paper bills. In 2009, in order to promote the transition of bills from paper commercial bills to electronic commercial bills, the relevant administrative measures limited the longest term of electronic commercial bills to 1 year.
After the establishment of Shanghai Bill Exchange, bill trading entered the era of electronic bills. At this point, the above-mentioned "Measures" finally unified the maximum term of commercial bills to 6 months.
This is undoubtedly a big plus for SMEs. For a long time, high accounts receivable is a sword hanging over the heads of small and medium-sized enterprises.
"Because there is still the problem of unequal status of market players objectively, large enterprises often use their strong market position to extend the payment period, such as using electronic commercial bills to extend the payment period to 6-9 months, which takes up too much funds of small and medium-sized micro-suppliers, resulting in the accumulation of accounts receivable, slow capital turnover and increased capital cost of small and medium-sized micro-enterprises." Zhao Cila, senior consultant of the Financial Market Center of CITIC Bank Shanghai Branch, told the reporter.
In response to the voice of small and medium-sized enterprises, since last year, the the State Council executive meeting has repeatedly deployed support for the development of individual industrial and commercial households in small and medium-sized enterprises, and studied shortening the acceptance period of electronic commercial bills from 1 year to six months to reduce the pressure on enterprises to occupy funds.
A number of industry interviewees said that according to international practice, the account period of enterprise accounts receivable is usually two to three months. For example, in the United States, the term of commercial paper does not exceed 270 days, that is, 9 months; In Japan, the issuance period of commercial paper is mainly 1-3 months, accounting for about 60% of the total issuance period.
The Measures adjusted the maximum term of commercial bills from 1 year to six months, which reduced the account cycle and financing cost of SMEs from the institutional level.
"To shorten the term of bills, the obvious policy intention of the central bank is to protect the rights and interests of small and medium-sized enterprises." Zhou, assistant to the president of securities and president of Bill Tribe, said.
It is worth mentioning that the shortening of the longest term of commercial paper is another new change in the bill market. At the beginning of June this year, the new generation bill business system launched by Shanghai Bill Exchange realized the detachable function of bill "small change payment", that is, the bill package amount can be disassembled from the smallest to the smallest to any amount for payment.
In Zhou's view, the shortening of the bill term and the "split" function of the new generation bill business system have greatly improved the payment convenience of the holder. "The original large bill can't be split, so it can't be applied to the payment of small transaction scenarios. Now the split function can split and zero the large bill for different payment scenarios."
In this regard, Zhao Cila also said that strengthening the bill payment function is more conducive to promoting the bills of accounts receivable. "In the market, the more short-term bills, the more people are willing to accept them. Even if SMEs get a six-month bill, if they go to finance, they only need to bear the financing cost for six months at most. "
Because bills have both credit and capital attributes, commercial banks are the main force in allocating bill assets in the secondary market of bills. The shortening of the term of commercial paper, many people in the industry believe, may increase the interest rate fluctuation and transaction scale in the secondary market of paper in the short term.
Zhou Haibin, vice president of Shanghai Pulan Financial Services Co., Ltd. said: "On the premise that bills are still credit assets, the overall demand for institutional tickets will increase. At the same time, due to the shortened duration of assets, institutions need to increase the frequency of band transactions to maintain the stability of profit income. "
Zhou believes that the shortening of the duration of bill assets means that the interest rate may be lowered for a longer period, and the narrowing of its income space also reduces the spread income of commercial banks, testing the comprehensive operating ability of commercial banks; But on the other hand, it may also reduce the discount rate of bills, which will bring good news to the bill financing of entity enterprises.
The new regulations fully support SMEs.
In addition to the payment function, bill discount is also a common financing method for small and medium-sized enterprises, which embodies the financing attribute of bills. The "Measures" have made many modifications in the discount of bills that are beneficial to the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Zhou noted that in the past, it was relatively simple to submit only contract invoices for discount information. Now, the "Measures" expand the discount materials to almost all "materials that can reflect the real trading relationship and the relationship between creditor's rights and debts".
"This means that as long as it conforms to the real situation, you can submit warehouse receipts, running water and other materials. On the one hand, restore the' creditor's rights and debts' part of Article 10 of the Negotiable Instruments Law; On the other hand, the restrictions on certification materials have been liberalized, which has expanded compared with the original method and will further help bill financing to support the real economy. " Zhou said to him.
The group that is more "tiny" than the generally recognized small and micro enterprises should be individual industrial and commercial households. After the publication of the Measures, Zhao Cila found that what everyone in the WeChat group began to discuss more was that the Measures extended the ticket holders to natural persons.
According to Article 14 of the Measures, the holders of commercial bills applying for discount shall be natural persons, legal persons and their branches and unincorporated organizations established in People's Republic of China (PRC) according to law.
In Zhao Cila's view, adding a "natural person" as a ticket holder is a major difference between the official announcement and the exposure draft, which reflects the state's emphasis on individual industrial and commercial households as market entities, so that hundreds of millions of existing individual industrial and commercial households and rural contracted households can also become ticket holders and discount applicants for commercial bills, which facilitates the use and financing of micro-enterprises and embodies the principle that "individual industrial and commercial households are important market entities".
With the increasing number of overdue commercial bills, the Measures will also impose stricter penalties on overdue acceptors, propose stronger disciplinary measures and strengthen the credit restraint mechanism for acceptors.
Article 36 of the Measures stipulates: "If bills continue to be overdue or fail to disclose information as required, financial institutions shall not handle bill acceptance, discount, guarantee and pledge for commercial bill acceptors in the last two years."
"This means that institutions that do not speak credit will be removed from the' list' of bill business by financial institutions in the future. Such a disciplinary mechanism has played a very important and key role in further purifying the credit of the bill market. " Zhou further explained that this provision draws lessons from Japan's practice, and Japan's bill law implements a "non-crossing" system for bill refusal. This kind of sanction system is undoubtedly fatal to bill issuing enterprises, but it has played a vital and positive role in maintaining the credit order of bills.
Acceptance and deposit "two lines" to control risks
Strengthening risk control is another focus that the Measures make the market pay more attention to. Article 24 of the Measures restricts the proportion of acceptance bills and deposits of banks and finance companies, requiring that they should not exceed 65,438+05% of the total assets of the acceptor and 65,438+00% of the scale of deposits absorbed respectively.
"These two lines, in fact, regulate and restrict individual financial institutions that rely too much on bill assets and bill business derivative deposits from the perspective of risk prevention in the whole industry. Acceptance is an off-balance sheet business of banks and finance companies. In the past, there have been cases where risks spread because transitional acceptance could not be paid on time. " Zhou said to him.
Finance companies are called "internal banks" and belong to non-bank financial institutions, which mainly absorb deposits from group members, handle loans and settle funds. Previously, their acceptance bills were also called "silver tickets". However, in recent years, there are not a few cases in which financial companies have been punished for violating the bill business.
The case mentioned more in the market is the financial company case of Baota Petrochemical Group. Baota Petrochemical Group used to be a "star-class" private enterprise in Northwest China. From 20 16 to 20 18, excessive dependence on its financial companies for bill financing led to explosive growth of bills payable. In the end, it fell into a debt explosion of/kloc-0.00 billion, which made its founder become a "prisoner" from the "richest man" in Ningxia, and the ending made the market feel embarrassed.
The Measures specifically define the acceptance scope of various commercial bills, define the scope of "silver bills" and "financial bills", and stipulate that "silver bills" are commercial bills accepted by banks and rural credit cooperatives.
For banks, the above two assessment indicators are mainly aimed at some banks blindly taking acceptance bonds as the main means to absorb deposits, so as to prevent the liquidity risk caused by the sudden drop of deposits at the debt end after the bank's acceptance bills are due for payment, but the loans at the asset end have not been recovered.
The reporter learned that in order to cope with the pressure of regulatory assessment indicators, many commercial banks issued a large number of bank bills at the end of half a year and at the end of the year, absorbing acceptance bills and increasing deposits to meet the assessment requirements of the loan-to-deposit ratio case. This operation has become normal.
"But the deposits of these acceptance bills are different from ordinary deposits, and the silver tickets issued have maturity dates, such as half a year and one year. Once the centralized payment period is reached, the deposits of acceptance bills previously absorbed by banks will fall off a cliff with the payment of silver bills. Loans released during this period cannot be recovered at the same time, which will lead to bank liquidity risks. " An industry insider revealed.
It is worth noting that the "two lines" have been implemented since June 65438+ 10 1 in 2024, giving some small banks and finance companies a transitional period, and they have one year to adjust and prepare their business.
Many interviewees believe that "Article 24" will not have a significant impact on the current bill market as a whole.
According to the data of China Merchants Securities, there is little pressure to rectify the maximum acceptance balance of listed banks. By the end of June 2022, the total balance of bank acceptance bills of 42 A-share listed banks was 10.24 trillion yuan, which was only 4.2% of the assets, far below the upper limit of 15%. From the perspective of specific banks, except for Zheshang Bank, the proportion of acceptance balance to total assets is below 15%, and Ping An Bank and Qilu Bank are around 15%. Generally speaking, the acceptance balance of joint-stock banks is relatively large, and the acceptance balance of state-owned banks accounts for a very low proportion of assets, all of which are below 5%.