China Merchants Bank, allied with the British Council, has sponsored a new program targeting younger Chinese overseas students, providing them with comprehensive information on choosing from available UK boarding schools.

In recent years, China has become the UK's largest source country for students studying abroad. According to the latest statistics from the Ministry of Education in China, the total number of China's overseas students hit a new record of 600,000 in 2017.

Overseas students are becoming younger, with the proportion of middle school students studying in the UK growing 20 percent in recent years.

The cost of boarding schools in the UK includes tuition and boarding fees. The average cost in 2017 reached 10,753 pounds ($15,314) per semester or 32,259 pounds per year, according to research by China Merchants Bank and the British Council.

For families whose children are studying abroad, choosing the right school is a difficult problem to overcome, due to the fragmentation and asymmetry of information.

As a result, State-owned banks, commercial banks and foreign banks have accelerated their efforts in the past several years to occupy the financial market related to overseas study.

Most of the programs in progress center on the construction of a "one-stop" cross-border service system, providing overseas students with value-added services such as car rental, internship and employment.

Fan Hong contributed to this story.