Abstract: Using 2013-2018 annual reports of 49 Chinese listed banks, this paper employs natural language processing (NLP) and text analysis methods to construct the indicators of fintech development level for listed banks in each year, and then investigates the effects of the development level of bank-level fintech on the scale and proportion of retailing loans. The results show that the development of fintech could drive banks to increase the scale of retail loans and the proportion of retailing loans in total loans, and this effect is more pronounced for large national banks and more prominent over time. Further findings show that the driving role of fintech in retail lending is more pronounced for banks with lower management level, poor risk control ability and larger customer scale, which suggests that the improvement of management level, the enhancing of risk control ability and the precisely reach of customer demand are the underlying mechanisms through which banks' fintech could promote the development of retail lending. Moreover, the retail loans from the banks with higher level of fintech are also associated with higher returns.

Key words: fintech, commercial banks, retail lending