I am an amateur, but I feel that the core products provided by banks to customers should be "services". In the era of low interest rates, banks can only make a fuss about the word "service" if they want to remain competitive.

There is also innovation, and services also need to change with the rhythm of the times to create new "service" products.

The profits of China Bank are so high that even the bank president feels embarrassed. Especially this year, under the restriction of many unfavorable factors, the operating pressure of enterprises has increased, some enterprises have closed down, and some business owners have "run away". In sharp contrast, the banking industry is a unique landscape here. In the first three quarters, 16 banks * * * realized an operating income of 1.66 trillion yuan, exceeding the total GDP of the six western provinces in the same period, achieving a net profit of nearly 700 billion yuan, an increase of more than 30% year-on-year, and an average daily profit of 2.5 billion yuan.

The "getting rich" of the banking industry comes from the controlled interest rate under protection, not from its super management and innovation ability. In other words, spread income has become the main factor for banks to get rich, and it is almost a common phenomenon for domestic banks to have spread income as high as 70% to 80%. A few months ago, the Banking Value Creation Report released by an internationally renowned consulting company showed that compared with the mature counterparts in the world, the profit source of China's banking industry is still the traditional deposit and loan business and the amazing deposit and loan spread, and the spread of China's banking industry is 14 times higher than that of foreign countries.

The most important reason why Chinese banks have been in the "spread era" for a long time is that the domestic capital market is still immature and slightly naive. On the contrary, the development of banking in developed countries is quite mature. Although the spread between countries is high or low due to the differences in economic and financial environment and historical system, the spread between banks is generally at a relatively reasonable level. In China, a trading bank can easily earn a spread of at least 300 basis points (1 basis point equals one ten thousandth), but in mature markets, it is good to reach 20 basis points.

In mature markets, commercial banks generally do not make a living from "spreads", but pay special attention to improving the operational efficiency and professional level of banking intermediaries and enhancing the competitiveness of the banking system. The intermediary business income of European and American banks generally accounts for more than 25% of the total bank income, and some big banks even exceed 50%, and it is still rising. For example, more than 60% of the income of German commercial banks comes from intermediary business; Barclays Bank's intermediary business income accounted for 73%; The intermediary business income of American big banks accounts for more than 50% of the total income, even as high as 80%. However, the intermediary business of banks in China only accounts for about 20%.

Although financial services and other intermediary services characterized by fees have accounted for more than half of the total income of commercial banks in developed countries, the profits from their deposit and loan business only account for about 20% of the total profits, while high-tech intermediary services such as acceptance, credit investigation, corporate credit rating evaluation, asset evaluation, personal financial consulting, forward foreign exchange trading and foreign exchange futures have brought 80% profits to them, and the intermediary business has become a veritable "gold mine".

If domestic banks want to develop sustainably with dignity, on the one hand, they should enhance the innovation consciousness of financial products. Commercial banks should abandon the backward concept of "eating spreads", adapt to the requirements of China customers as soon as possible, transition from simple deposit and withdrawal to higher-level requirements, and constantly expand their business, such as insurance agency business, audit consulting business, entrusted loan business, etc. At the same time, taking the opportunity of foreign banks entering China, we will actively improve the service quality and enhance the competitiveness of the industry. More importantly, it is necessary to force banks to improve their service quality and win more customers through interest rate marketization, so as to firmly occupy the initiative of the financial market.

Excerpted from an old article of Tencent Finance ten years ago, "The" spread era "of the banking industry should have ended long ago, and enhance the sense of innovation"