The competition between the two sides is mainly concentrated in the overlapping part.
Advantages of financial institutions, overlapping battlefields between the two sides, and advantages of Internet enterprises.
Construction of bilateral Internet platforms such as deposits, cash business, international settlement, low-and medium-risk loans, custody, investment, investment banking, sales of complex financial products, trust, small and micro loans, consumer loans, online payment, collection and payment, insurance guarantee, guarantee commitment, brokerage, development and sales of simple financial products sales software, production of hardware and equipment, and development of new technologies and new models in the initial stage.
It can be seen that both banks and internet companies hope to gain more markets and benefits in the overlapping parts. However, if we continue to maintain the rules of the game of "winner takes all" in the absence of our own strength, the result of competition between the two sides will become very tragic. Therefore, for non-heavyweight financial and internet companies, the optimal game strategy is not to independently develop and operate each other's advantageous projects, but to cooperate and outsource. Therefore, for some small and medium-sized banks, it is an ideal and realistic choice to throw away the burden, seize the opportunity, establish cooperation with "BAT" Internet companies that firmly grasp the lifeline of network entrance and traffic, use their platforms to acquire customers, and add their own good financial services to complement each other and win-win cooperation.
Although it is still unknown whether banks can gain customers' recognition by passively entering the Internet industry and building their own platforms, it is not necessarily an infeasible road to fully tap and utilize the resources in the banking customer system from the perspective of providing better services for customers, especially banks with large customer groups, as long as they are based on the huge customer base of banks. It may not be possible to do it on a large scale, but the benefits of refined birth and postpartum will be very obvious. The ultimate goal is to optimize the banking ecosystem, provide better differentiated services to customers and improve customer stickiness, rather than relying on e-commerce profits to make customers more willing to stay in the banking system. If this goal can be achieved, it may be a way.
In addition, in the era of great development of internet technology, banks should not only compete with internet companies for customers and markets, but also continue to compete with banks with network strength. In this process, financial institutions that better apply Internet technology and integrate Internet thinking may have competitive advantages, so how to realize this transformation may be the core point that the banking industry should carefully consider in the future. To sum up, for banks that are currently in an obvious passive defense state in the middle battlefield of Internet finance, if they want to build and develop their own Internet finance model and hope to gain certain advantages, they can start from the following aspects:
The first is to enhance the strategic position of the development of Internet finance.
Under the impact of financial channels of Internet enterprises, major commercial banks should try their best to promote Internet finance to the height of the whole bank's development strategy, not just a small item in the annual work report. What bank management needs to realize is that China's economy is becoming more and more Internet-based. As far as the current situation is concerned, the competitive position of banks in the Internet economy is obviously not as good as that in the offline economy, and Internet companies are still expanding their competitive advantages over banks. The platform of Internet companies is expanding rapidly, and the first-Mover advantage over banks is accumulating rapidly. What's more, some Internet companies have achieved tens of billions of annual profits, and the stock market value of some companies has surpassed that of some banks. The space left for banks and the chances of winning are also passing by with time.
Second, increase investment in Internet resources.
At present, many banks are still enjoying a return on equity of around 20%, and Internet business is the growth point in the future. It is a very simple conclusion in strategic management to support growth business with cash cow business. At present, banks still have sufficient financial strength to participate in the competition: if a big bank increases its investment in Internet finance by 2 billion yuan every year, it will only reduce the bank's profit by less than 1%, but it is enough to form a significant advantage (while the total operating expenditure of Alibaba [Weibo ]20 1 1 year is only 4.7 billion yuan). In addition, commercial banks also have a huge customer base. If these corporate customers can be mobilized to join the bank's internet platform, it is expected to significantly strengthen the externality of cross-border networks.
Third, establish a more independent organizational structure.
Judging from the organizational model of Minsheng E-commerce and lufax, this practice is worthy of emulation by other banks. First of all, this architecture solves the compliance problem, so that the future development space is no longer limited by the scope of banking business; The second is to solve the conflict of corporate culture; Third, it is possible to break through the bank's assessment and salary system and provide a more effective incentive mechanism. Even if it continues to be placed in the banking system, Chinese banks should reduce the constraints of the existing culture, assessment and salary of banks on the Internet finance sector through more authorization.
Fourthly, repositioning the connotation of brand image.
In the past, the brand image of most domestic banks was not prominent, which was not conducive to online publicity. On the one hand, there is a high degree of overlap, lack of recognition, on the other hand, there is a sense of stability and fashion, and the three are not three-dimensional and full, which will affect the marketing of target Internet customers. For example, the logos of most banks in China are highly homogeneous: red, blue or green circles.
The high homogeneity of LOGO reflects that banks in China dare not have their own characteristics for multiple reasons. This seems to be due to the fear that once you choose a certain personality, it means giving up part of the market. But in fact, the business model is always reluctant. It is impossible for any bank to win an absolute advantage in all market segments, and it is impossible to expand its advantage in the core target market if it does not dare to give up the resources in the external market. In the field of internet, no feature means being replaced.
If domestic banks are worried about completely changing the brand image, LOGO and brand connotation, they can consider another alternative, that is, launching an internet finance sub-brand. This sub-brand can not only have a brand-new LOGO, slogan and brand image, but also try to launch mascots and even fixed brand spokespersons to make brand building more full and three-dimensional, with the ultimate goal of obviously enhancing the appeal to target customers.
5. Fully respect the spirit of the Internet and follow the bilateral market business model.
1, setting? Independent domain name. Under the brand-new sub-brand, the internet platform of banks should try to adopt independent domain names that are easy to spread.
2. Organize the pages according to customer needs.
3. Stimulate unilateral network externalities. Whether it is evaluation, credit rating, forum or other forms, banks should try their best to create convenience for direct or indirect communication between customers.
4、? Open to customers of other banks. We believe that there are no technical or regulatory problems in this area, and the functions of being good at business and communication have been realized.
5、? If possible, consider establishing an internet financial alliance with other banking institutions.
Six, specialization and segmentation
If it cannot become the main force of general platform competition, banks can also choose some market segments and professional fields. For example, building a trading platform for some industrial chains can largely avoid competitive pressure. For example, the cooperation between Ping An Bank and Yi Bei [Weibo] is also a very important choice.
In a word, Internet finance has brought both challenges and opportunities to the banking industry. Banks with insufficient understanding and slow action will face more and more embarrassing competition in the future: it is increasingly difficult to reverse the late disadvantages of platform construction. For banks that successfully grasp the trend of Internet finance, their channel ability to reach customers will be significantly enhanced, and their business capabilities such as credit risk management will continue to benefit from big data technology, thus helping them to dig deep into the opportunities of blue ocean businesses such as small and micro loans and consumer credit. At present, the competition of internet finance has just begun, and it is difficult for us to judge the outcome of the middle battlefield. However, the history of internet finance has provided another screening mechanism for the survival of the fittest in the banking industry. Generally speaking, this mechanism will benefit more market-oriented banks. Of course, if its own strength is insufficient, it is a win-win development model to choose to cooperate with platform-based e-commerce enterprises to carry out embedded development based on industrial chain.