Against the background of tightening regulations, industry leader Ant Group urgently needs to find new growth points.

On November 3, 2020, Ant Group’s listing was urgently suspended. Since then, the group has carried out a series of rectification actions in order to comply with regulatory policies.

From the observation of the consumer finance industry, both the asset side and the liability side are quietly changing.

Specifically, on the asset side, the brand upgrades of "Huabei" and "Jiebei" are in progress; on the liability side, Alipay "Ant Hehua" recently launched "timed transfer" and "balance Revenue" and other functions.

At present, innovation in the consumer finance industry seems to have entered a bottleneck period. In addition to the difficulty in acquiring incremental customers, there are also few good cases for refined operation of existing products. One of the important reasons is that the leader has become conservative.

At present, if Ant Group's rectification is regarded as "defending", then continuing to innovate can be regarded as relaunching an "offensive" trend, which also brings new ideas to industry operations.

Ant Consumer Financial: “Territory segmentation” has been completed, and the brand update is in progress

In November 2020, the listing of Ant Group was urgently suspended; subsequently, in June 2021, Ant Consumer Finance was approved to open for business, becoming the second consumer finance company approved to open for business this year and the 29th consumer finance company to open nationwide.

In accordance with regulatory approval, within the one-year transition period from the opening of Ant Consumer Finance Company, the two small loan companies achieved a smooth and orderly exit from the market.

In addition, according to the approval documents, the registered capital of Ant Consumer Finance is 8 billion yuan. According to the 10-12 times leverage limit of consumer finance companies and based on the current registered capital, Ant Consumer Finance’s lending scale is no more than 100 billion yuan.

Many practitioners said that in order to meet the capital adequacy ratio requirements, Ant Group is brewing a new round of capital increase plans.

An insider close to Ant Group told the consumer finance industry that in order to comply with regulatory requirements for "local operations" of city commercial banks, the preliminary work of segmenting local customer groups between Ant Group and cooperative banks has been basically completed. . The next step is to upgrade the brand.

The consumer finance industry has previously reported that in accordance with regulatory requirements, the portion operated by Ant Consumer Finance and jointly loaned will retain the original brands of "Huabei" and "Jiubei"; as for the bank-funded, Ant Consumer Finance The part of Jin that provides diversion and loan assistance services will no longer be labeled as "Huabei" and "Jiebei" (for details, click "Post-Ant Era: Internal batch adjustment of products, "new loan assistance" model officially launched").

According to the rectification plan, the "Huabei" and "Jiebei" brand rectification work will be completed before the end of this year. A bank practitioner said that specific plans are currently being communicated internally.

Alipay: “Ant Hehua” launches new functions of “automatic transfer” and “balance income”

On the asset side, financial institutions are actively guiding users to “consume rationally” and “borrow calmly” ". Taking Ant as an example, after lowering the Huabei quota at the beginning of this year, it is planning to introduce a "loan cooling-off period" internally.

On the debt side, Ant Group has also made new moves. In addition to the launch of the new function "Pay Later", the consumer finance industry recently learned that Alipay's "Ant Hehua" section has added new functions.

As early as November 2020, Alipay launched a new function "Ant Hehua". Users can invite other Alipay users to participate in Ant Hehua. Two people can use *** to save money and bills together. Management and other functions. At that time, this section was widely criticized by users due to its immature functions.

Now, Consumer Finance World has discovered that this section has undergone a series of updates.

Specifically, "Ant Hehua" previously only supported the opening of two people. It was mainly built to meet the needs of young couples and couples to establish a small treasury and reasonably plan expenditures. It is a unique financial space. .

Now you can invite multiple members such as friends and relatives in addition to couples, and the scope of use has been expanded to many scenarios such as falling in love, sharing a house, raising children, etc.

In terms of usage functions, starting from August 12, the funds transferred to Ant Hehua can be enabled by the group owner to enable the "balance to enjoy income" function. Hehua balances can enjoy Yu’e Bao income, and the income is directly distributed to the balance of the opened Hehua group. Previously, there was no profit from the funds transferred to Hehua.

In addition, as the Chinese Valentine's Day approaches, Ant Hehua also launched the "The rest of my life is closely related to you" marketing campaign, giving shopping coupons and lottery rewards to new users.

In terms of operation, the steps remain unchanged. Users can manually transfer funds from bank cards and Yu'E Bao to Ant Hehua, or they can set a fixed time per month to transfer funds from a designated account. Ant Hehua can be used for online and offline consumption. For shopping on Taobao, Tmall and other platforms, just select Ant Hehua as the payment method. When making purchases in the store, show the payment code and select Ant Hehua to pay.

In terms of security, Ant Hehua can set a monthly spending limit after confirmation by two participants to avoid capital losses.

Many users also complained about this: it is easy to merge flowers, but difficult to "break up". Any party may use all or part of the funds without authorization, and future disputes over the use of funds are unavoidable.

It is foreseeable that as Internet finance enters its second half, the entire industry will become more compliant. While Ant Group is carrying out a series of tasks such as brand renewal, loan assistance adjustments, and business updates, it also needs to tell new stories to revitalize users and maintain growth.