Since its launch, the TV series "Flowers" has continued to become the center of conversation, with the series remaining highly popular and receiving rave reviews. Behind the well-made and calmly polished work, where does the money come from?
This is back to 2018.
As the only commercial bank with credit support, Bank of Shanghai participated in the early production of "Flowers". Starting from opening a basic account, it continued to maintain close contact with the crew. In the winter of 2019, the crew signed a production agreement with Tencent for the film and television drama "Flowers". The crew expressed the hope to apply for a fund for the production of the film and television drama "Flowers". The preliminary cooperation intention between the two parties has been reached.
Actually, writing the word "cooperation" is not that easy. Cultural enterprises are asset-light, highly dependent on creativity, and have weak guarantee capabilities. When conducting financing, they often face difficulties in evaluating intangible assets and recovering mortgage assets. "Even leading companies are facing the same dilemma." Wu Fangyi, deputy director of the Jing'an District Culture and Tourism Bureau, said frankly.
At the same time, many cultural enterprises are in their infancy, the industry categories are complex, and there are many uncertainties in business operations. The life cycle and profit model of such enterprises are different from traditional enterprises. To serve such enterprises well, financial institutions need to develop new risk control models, improve their ability to identify high-quality cultural projects, and balance returns and risks.
For the crew of "Flowers", the Bank of Shanghai provided a large medium and long-term credit facility this time. The reason why we dare to grant this kind of credit is, firstly, out of trust in the production team; secondly, it is also based on customized plays on large platforms, and the credit plan is formulated taking into account the source of repayment, loan purpose and project background. "The source of repayment is very important, and customized dramas from some large platforms are relatively reliable," said Shen Ning, president of Jing'an Branch of the Bank of Shanghai.
"Flowers" is undoubtedly an excellent example of finance empowering the development of cultural industries. Ye Zhengxiang, deputy general manager of the Bank of Shanghai's corporate business department, said frankly that there is currently no "packaged" universal solution that can be applied to loans in all cultural industries. However, "it is not limited to real estate mortgages in the traditional sense. To empower the development of cultural industries, there are actually many means of financial innovation." He gave an example, taking a stage play as an example. The loan cycle for a stage play is relatively long, but as long as the performance starts , can generate repayment cash flow in the process, so that box office pledge can be carried out.
Such innovations and explorations are happening in every corner of Shanghai's cultural industry.
Wu Fangyi said that as of now, the total number of films registered and approved by film and television companies in Jing'an District has exceeded 200, and the number of film and television companies in Jing'an District has exceeded 300. In the process of daily communication and corporate services with these film and television companies, we found that a very prominent feature of film and television companies is that they operate "light assets", but at the same time they have rich and high-quality content IP.
In order to prevent high-quality film and television content from being "difficult to produce" due to financial constraints, the Jing'an District Culture and Tourism Bureau has opened up the connection point between financial services and industrial support, actively recommends bank financing to high-quality film and television project companies, and at the same time uses financing for film and television companies The platform provides loans and provides special industry support with loan interest discounts and guarantee subsidies of up to 1 million yuan.
In recent years, relevant departments in Shanghai have successively introduced favorable policies to promote cultural development and actively built a platform for docking projects between banks and enterprises. It is reported that as of the end of 2023, Shanghai Bank has served more than 23,000 customers in the cultural industry and has provided credit support to more than 3,400 cultural enterprises, with a loan balance of more than 34 billion yuan.
