Tong Yu | Tsinghua University

Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor of Finance at Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management (Tsinghua SEM).

My research focuses on Financial Intermediation and FinTech, with an emphasis on their economic impact on firms, entrepreneurs, households, and financial institutions. These topics intersect with multiple fields, including corporate finance, entrepreneurial finance, household finance, and banking. I am also interested in issues related to regulation of financial intermediaries.

I received my PhD in Finance from Imperial College London. While pursuing my PhD, I worked for two years at UK's Financial Conduct Authority.

Contact: yutong@sem.tsinghua.edu.cn tongyu.tsinghua@gmail.com

Curriculum Vitae

WORKING PAPER

Data as Collateral: Open Banking for Small Business Lending [SSRN]

Awards: Brattle Group Ph.D. Candidate Award for Outstanding Research, WFA 2025
SANFI Best Paper on Banking, Spanish Finance Association Finance Forum 2025
Runner-up, Philipp Sandner Award in Digital Finance Research, Frankfurt School 2025

Conference presentations: WFA 2025, EFA 2025, Stanford SITE Conference 2025, Future of Financial Information Conference 2025, CEPR Endless Summer Conference on Financial Intermediation and Corporate Finance 2025, Bocconi-CEPR-JCF Information, Contracts, and Firms Conference 2025, IBEFA Summer Meeting 2025, Banco Central do Brasil Annual Conference 2025, Spanish Finance Association Finance Forum 2025, Econometric Society World Congress 2025

Scheduled for ASSA-Econometric Society North American Winter Meeting 2026, FMA 2025, SFA 2025, Federal Reserve-CSBS-FDIC Community Bank Research Conference 2025, CEPR RPN FinTech and Digital Currencies Annual Meeting 2025, Central Bank of Ireland-UCD-CEPR Conference on Macro-Finance and Financial Stability Policies 2025

Abstract: Open banking enables small businesses to share their bank financial data with potential lenders. I examine the effect of open banking on collateralization in small business lending. For identification, I exploit institutional features of the UK’s open banking policy that creates a discontinuity in firms’ eligibility to share data. Using a novel loan-level dataset covering the entire UK secured business loan market, I document that open banking eases the pledge of assets like accounts receivable and inventory. Firms eligible to share data are more likely to pledge such assets as collateral, thereby improving their access to credit. These effects are more pronounced for firms facing greater information asymmetry and those with greater information available to share. These findings highlight the role of open banking in reducing collateral constraints by mitigating information asymmetry.

PUBLICATION

Customer Data Access and Fintech Entry: Early Evidence from Open Banking [NBER] [CEPR] [BoE]
Journal of Financial Economics (2025), 169: 103950 (with Tania Babina, Saleem Bahaj, Greg Buchak, Filippo De
Marco, Angus Foulis, Will Gornall, and Francesco Mazzola)

Abstract: Open banking (OB) empowers bank customers to share transaction data with ﬁntechs and other banks. 49 countries have adopted OB policies. Consumer trust in ﬁntechs predicts OB policy adoption and adoption spurs investment in ﬁntechs. UK microdata shows that OB enables: i) consumers to access both ﬁnancial advice and credit; ii) SMEs to establish new ﬁntech lending relationships. In a calibrated model, OB universally improves welfare through entry and product improvements when used for advice. When used for credit, OB promotes entry and competition by reducing adverse selection, but higher prices for costlier or privacy-conscious consumers partially offset these beneﬁts.

WORK IN PROGRESS

Banks and Alternative Finance: Evidence from Payday Loan Market

Dissecting the Long-Term Performance of the Initial Coin Offering Market
(with Franklin Allen and Jae Hyoung Kim)

Artificial Intelligence and Financial Crime

POLICY PUBLICATIONS

Financial Lives 2024: Key findings from the FCA’s Financial Lives May 2024 survey [FCA]
Financial Conduct Authority 2025 (with T. Burrell, I. Clark, R. Cross, M. Elliot-Cooke, A. Martin, C. Nichols,
E. Ripley, G. Thomas, M. Watmough, V. Whiting)

Financial Lives 2022: Key findings from the FCA’s Financial Lives May 2022 survey [FCA]
Financial Conduct Authority 2023 (with T. Burrell, I. Clark, R. Cross, M. Elliot-Cooke, J. Hopkins, A. Martin,
C. Nichols, E. Ripley, V. Semenova, G. Thomas, M. Watmough, J. Weir, V. Whiting)

TEACHING

2025 - present   Empirical Corporate Finance, PhD Program at Tsinghua SEM

2025 - present   Venture Capital and Private Equity, Master of Finance Program at Tsinghua SEM

2025 - present   Finance of Innovation, Master of Finance Program at Tsinghua SEM