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China Commercial Credit's Pride Lending Club Completes First Two Loan Transactions
SUZHOU, CHINA--(Marketwired - Apr 21, 2014) - China Commercial Credit, Inc. (NASDAQ: CCCR), a microfinance company whose current major business is providing microcredit loans and loan guarantees to small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), farmers and individuals in Jiangsu Province, today said that its online loan portal subsidiary, Pride Lending Club, http://www.pridelendingclub.com/, has completed loan transactions for its first two customers.
The first customer, Mr. Tang, the owner of a textile business based in Wujiang City, applied for a nine-month RMB 150,000 loan (USD24,110) on the Pride portal on April 10th and was awarded this loan, with an annual interest rate of 10.08 percent, on April 15th.
Pride's second customer was Mr. Chen, also the owner of a textile business in Wujiang City. Mr. Chen applied for a nine-month RMB 150,000 loan on the Pride portal on April 11th and was awarded this loan, with an annual interest rate of 10.8 percent, on April 16th.
Commenting on their experience using Pride Lending Club, Mr. Tang said he was "very happy" with the speed at which his loan request was handled. "We didn't expect the process would be completed in only five days," he said. "Plus, with our application being completed online but the credit underwriting performed offline, this made things quite simple for us."
Mr. Chen added that, "I was unsure at first how everything would work. But almost immediately the portal guided us through the process, which turned out to be smooth and convenient. And the loan rate we were given was very fair."
Pride is among China's first online loan services to be offered and managed by a microcredit company. The portal is designed to increase the safety of online loans by requiring each loan application to be fully guaranteed by a highly qualified guarantor prior to the loan being issued. Pride has to date formed agreements with four such entities, representing aggregate principal guarantees of up to $55 million. Among the four is Wujiang Luxiang Microcredit Company, CCCR's primary operating entity.
For the services it provides, Pride receives a management fee from the borrower of one to two percent of the loan principal, and receives from the lender 10 percent of all interest paid by the borrower.
"We are thrilled to have Pride Lending Club in full operation," said China Commercial Credit CEO, Mr. Huichun Qin. "We look forward to assisting additional qualified loan applicants across China receive the funds they need to help their business grow."
About China Commercial Credit
China Commercial Credit (http://www.chinacommercialcredit.com), founded in 2008, provides business loans and loan guarantee services to more than 280 small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), farmers and individuals in China's Jiangsu Province. Due to recent legislation and banking reform in China, these SMEs, farmers and individuals -- which historically had been excluded from borrowing funds from State-owned and commercial banks -- are now able to borrow money at competitive rates from microfinance lenders. According to 2012 data, SMEs, farmers and individuals account for eight of ten jobs in China and comprise 60 percent of the nation's GDP.
Investors wishing to receive CCC's corporate communications as they become available may go to http://www.ir-site.com/china-commercial-credit/default.asp and register under Email Alerts. The company's blog, "From The CEO," also appears at the same site. Each new blog post will be announced on the company's Twitter account, @CCCR_update, where readers may link directly to the post.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of United States securities laws. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties (some of which are beyond our control) or other assumptions that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this release to conform these statements to actual results or to changes in our expectations. You should review the factors described in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 31, 2014 and other documents we file from time to time with the SEC. We qualify all of our forward-looking statements by these cautionary statements.
