Ant Financial's consumer lending business appears to be facing serious regulatory headwinds, with a 74 percent quarter-over-quarter decline in sales of asset backed securities tied to consumer lending.
Ant relies on asset-backed securities but issuance is sliding Billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Financial, the world’s biggest fintech firm, may have a problem. Financing from an obscure part of the debt market that the company has relied heavily on for its key consumer lending business is drying up. It’s sold only 22.8 billion yuan ($3.6 billion) of asset-backed securities tied to consumer lending in the first quarter, down 74 percent from the previous three months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg and China Securitization Analytics.