Exploring the "One-Person Company" | Get License in the Afternoon, Open Account in the Evening Banks Race to Grab "Super Individual" OPC

AI · How can banking services adapt to the high-frequency capital needs of super individuals?

Reported by Zhang Manyou, China Economic Journal, Beijing

A person, a laptop, and a set of AI tools are enough to register and operate a company. Recently, the concept of “One-Person Company” (OPC) has surged to the top of trending searches. As digital technology and platform ecosystems penetrate deeply, this new entrepreneurial model is emerging at an unprecedented speed.

Behind business development, funding support is essential. However, in response to OPCs’ “one-stop, lightweight, integrated” needs, traditional financial risk control logic and service processes appear outdated.

Faced with this increasingly prominent structural contradiction, several banks including Jiangsu Bank, Nanjing Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, and Changshu Rural Commercial Bank have recently launched dedicated financial service programs. The role of banks is shifting from traditional “funding providers” to “business partners” that integrate financing, account management, tax services, and resource linkage.

Traditional Logic Meets “Solo Warfare”

The core characteristic of OPCs is an extremely lightweight organizational structure with a high dependence on digital tools. Gao Zhengyang, a special researcher at Su Commercial Bank, explained that entrepreneurs rely on AI tools and platform ecosystems to conduct operations through content creation, software development, data services, and other diverse methods to create value. “From an operational perspective, one-person companies generally feature light assets, low fixed costs, flexible business models, and rapid growth, but they also face issues like small operational scale, significant cash flow fluctuations, and a lack of collateral assets.”

Wang Xi, an industry consultant at Analysys Qianfan, further added that OPCs are characterized by a “single-person formation” model, resulting in features such as lightweight assets, high efficiency, strong flexibility, vertical technology focus, and a core asset of “people.” Their funding needs are often small, high-frequency, and urgent. However, traditional finance mainly serves large companies, emphasizing fixed asset collateral and lacking comprehensive credit evaluation systems for intangible assets like technological achievements, personal abilities, and business orders. Additionally, cumbersome approval processes and long disbursement cycles make it difficult to meet OPCs’ urgent capital needs. Moreover, banks typically offer only single loan or settlement products, lacking integrated services deeply aligned with OPC operational scenarios, leading to a significant disconnect between service supply and operational demand. Overall, OPCs currently face core challenges in obtaining financial services, including mismatched traditional credit logic, ineffective risk assessment systems, misaligned service timing and processes, and limited service offerings.

Gao Zhengyang noted that traditional financial systems rely heavily on financial statements and collateral when conducting credit, but OPCs are newly established, with less standardized financial data, making it hard for banks to fit them into traditional risk models. Additionally, OPC entrepreneurs often have unstable income structures, increasing uncertainty in credit recognition, risk pricing, and post-loan management. These factors combined create significant barriers for OPCs in accessing traditional financial services.

Bank Role Reimagined: From “Money Lender” to “Partner”

Wang Xi believes that, considering OPCs’ lightweight assets, high operational efficiency, and financing pain points, the immediate need for financial support falls into three areas: low-threshold, purely credit-based loan products developed from technological capabilities, business orders, and operational data; convenient, efficient account settlement and lightweight tax management tools; and banks acting as “connectors” to facilitate policy declarations, legal consulting, and industry resources, helping to compensate for the entrepreneurial capacity gaps of solo founders.

Financial institutions like Jiangsu Bank, Nanjing Bank, and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank are accelerating their transformation from “funding providers” to “business partners,” achieving multiple breakthroughs at the operational level. Wang Xi summarized that first, product logic is being reconstructed, shifting from reliance on fixed assets to comprehensive evaluation of soft information such as actual controllers, intellectual property, and industry prospects. For example, Jiangsu Bank offers up to 3 million yuan in pure credit lines, while Nanjing Bank’s “OPC Tongxin Plan” focuses on precise support for “people + computing power.”

Second, service process speeds are being enhanced through digital upgrades, such as “green channels.” Pudong Development Bank enables “license acquisition in the afternoon and account opening in the evening”; Qingdao Bank’s tech support team offers green channels for OPCs, with account opening completed in as fast as 20 minutes and fee waivers available; Changshu Rural Commercial Bank’s “OPC Chuangyi Loan” can disburse funds on the same day.

Third, service scope is expanding from single loans to “full-cycle comprehensive services,” including company finance, retail services, policy interpretation, and technology qualification applications. Jiangsu Bank’s OPC financial service plan’s core logic shifts from “making a loan” to “serving a company.” Based on comprehensive settlement services and centered on the SuYin Financial Manager digital platform, it integrates account management, payment settlement, fund scheduling, tax invoices, payroll management, bill services, financing support, and ecological linkages, forming a full-cycle support system of “account opening as service, operations as data, turnover as credit, growth as ecology.” In this system, banks are no longer just fund providers but become OPCs’ digital finance rooms, operational hubs, and growth partners.

Finally, risk control models are being innovated. “Using AI algorithms to convert dynamic data such as order contracts and personal credit reports into quantifiable credit profiles enables precise risk pricing and real-time monitoring,” Wang Xi explained.

While financial innovation progresses, risk control remains critical. Gao Zhengyang emphasized, “From a risk management perspective, OPCs tend to have weaker operational stability and higher lifecycle uncertainty. Therefore, banks need to balance innovative services with risk management and implement precise measures.”

(Edited by Yang Jingxin, reviewed by He Shasha, proofread by Zhai Jun)