More like the dust has settled, which seems to mean the irreversible de-financialization of the mutual fund giant. In fact, the previous Internet financial giants, including ant gold service, have on many occasions expressed the intention of "de-financialization", and can also see the substantive progress of the footsteps.
Why give up a city that has already been captured, turn to play a supporting role, willing to assist financial institutions to do services? This strategic adjustment will give birth to some brand new model? The new model will eventually lead to where? These are all very worthwhile to explore the issue.
The general contraction in the atmosphere
The first to announce that it does not do finance, is the ant gold service. in March 2017, ant gold service in Beijing high-profile announcement of the positioning of the transfer, "the future is only to do tech (technology), to help financial institutions do a good job of fin (finance)".
The Jingdong Finance, which took a stance a little later, denied it even more thoroughly.At the end of 2017, Chen Shengqiang, CEO of Jingdong Finance, said in an interview that "we fundamentally do not want to do finance".
This sharp turnaround is not just happening in the field of mutual funds. In the Internet financial giants have stated that they want to clear the relationship with the financial at the same time, the combination of production and financing also in full swing of the industrial giants, also appeared in a similar situation, releasing similar signals.
Evergrande Group's official website has long since changed from "Evergrande Group is based on people's livelihood and real estate, finance and health" to "people's livelihood and real estate, culture and tourism, health and wellness". The financial disappeared, as if it never appeared.
In fact, since the opening of financial liberalization in 2009, Internet giants and industrial giants, for finance, almost have the same ambition.
In the 2017 work conference, Hui Kayan, chairman of the board of directors of Evergrande Group, said that the goal of Evergrande Financial Group in 2017 is to realize the financial licenses of equity participation, holding banks, insurance, securities, trust, public fundraising funds, and Internet finance. Also at the opening conference of 2017, Liu Qiangdong, after praising the existing business of Jingdong Finance, also sketched a similar future picture with Xu Jiayin, Liu Qiangdong said, "In the future, Jingdong Finance will not only have these financial products and services now, soon, we will enter securities, credit, including banks, and one day we will apply for our own bank. Or hold a bank, so that we can provide full financial services for our users."
But these expectations, with the continuous tightening of regulation, can only be shelved, or avoided, or completely denied. Whether Internet giants expanding finance, or industrial giants into finance, although their respective native industries are different, but they are all in the same atmosphere, so they almost enter at the same point in time, and finally leave at a similar point in time.
The complex mentality behind the claim of not doing finance
But specifically for the Internet finance giants, although the same claim of not doing finance, but the mentality behind it may be different.
Although Ant Financial has repeatedly indicated that it does not do finance, the central bank still included it in the large gold control group simulation supervision pilot enterprises. To be able to be selected as a pilot, has not been a specific kind of financial business things, but in the eyes of the regulator, ants already have the systemic importance of influencing the entire financial industry.
In this regard, ants gold service has once again emphasized its technical attributes. According to media reports, ant gold service an insider has suggested to the regulatory, "ant gold service platform on these products and a large number of cooperative institutions, with ant gold service and no capital relationship, ant is to provide technical services. Even between a few shareholding financial institutions, did not occur the risk of connected transactions, it is recommended that should be regulated differently from the traditional gold control group."
According to Caixin, some analysts believe that the main reason why Ant Financial Services is so explained, mainly because, once Ant Financial Services is included in the simulation of financial holding company regulatory pilot, in the context of the current strong regulation, it is likely to mean that, in the future, it will significantly increase the cost of compliance, such as the most intuitive increase in capitalization, strengthen the relevant disclosure of information to improve transparency and so on.
In contrast, Jingdong Financial is another case. Jingdong Financial has got the financial license, far less complete than Ant Gold Service, and with the continued tightening of financial regulation, has also missed the best time to get a license.
Some insiders say, in fact, Jingdong has always had license anxiety, in the matter of applying for a license is not inactive, the reason is that the regulatory aspects of its actual ability to question, and therefore the gold content of the largest banks, funds, and other "big licenses", has not been obtained.
In the status quo is not as good as expected, the road ahead and temporarily not the case, the transformation of data technology companies, seems to be a better choice. According to the analysis of Murray Financial Liu Yannan, due to the cyclical fluctuations of the financial industry, as well as the insurmountable growth law of financial business, resulting in the valuation level of financial institutions, usually much lower than the Internet technology companies.
After the spin-off of Jingdong Finance, "soon to be listed separately" news has been constant, then, from the valuation and listing point of view, claiming to be a technology company, of course, is more pleasing to the eye, although in terms of revenue data, Jingdong Finance is still essentially a financial company.
Opening the door to let financial institutions in
But whatever the motivation for choosing to de-financialize, we do see the transformation already underway.
Internet financial giants to financialization, focusing on financial technology, as they themselves said, "financial technology to empower financial institutions", can see the specific mode of operation, in a nutshell, the main mutual fund giants to open up their own platforms, access to financial institutions, products or funds, and their own risk control work, or simply play a role in the development of a financial institution. The main reason for this is the fact that it is not a good idea to have a good time, but it is a good idea to have a good time, and it is a good idea to have a good time.
Ant gold service June 2017 open wealth number, invite banks, funds, insurance companies stationed, is to share their own traffic with financial institutions. And in May this year, the balance treasure also formally accessed the products of other fund companies, in addition to its own Tianhong Fund, there are many other fund companies such as Boshi, China Europe, Huaan, Guotai and other money funds, which is to access the products of financial institutions on their own platform.
The other two credit products of ant gold service, chanting and borrowing, have also been introduced to consumer finance companies and banks and other licensed financial institutions, also in the open their users, so that financial institutions to provide lending funds, ant gold service in the middle to do the work of wind control, collection, etc.
The ant gold service is the first time in the world that the ant gold service is in the middle to do the work of wind control, collection, and so on.
Jingdong Finance is also basically the same way for financial institutions. Recently, Jingdong Finance has been internal testing for a year of retail credit platform "borrow money" was launched, and was also placed on the home page of the Jingdong APP position to push. The "Lend Money" section is essentially a loan supermarket, which mainly aggregates credit products from licensed financial institutions, including a number of consumer finance companies and banks.
Jingdong Finance's cash loan business, Gold Bar, has also introduced banks as partners, and it can be seen that, in addition to an Internet microfinance company under Jingdong, Jingdong Gold Bar's funders also include partners such as Huishang Bank, Bank of Shanghai, and Bank of Xian.
In general, at the current stage, the mutual fund giants to introduce financial institutions, the model is mainly mutual fund giants to open up their own platforms and users, access to financial institutions' products and funds, and the use of their own financial industry pragmatism of the accumulated data deposits, in the docking process to do the work of wind control.
Winter has arrived, and as long as we live, there is still hope
So the main scene is still on the side of the mutual fund platform. Then as the "empowered" object, banks and other financial institutions, in fact, has a much larger volume of stock business, for this broader space, mutual fund platform fintech has begun to get involved in, and how much space to play?
In the rapid development of Internet finance at the same time, China's banking industry is also paying increasing attention to financial technology, in the recent intensive release of listed banks in the half-yearly report, we can also see that almost every bank has to talk about financial technology. However, according to the Suning Financial Research Institute Internet Finance Center Director Xue Hongyan observation, the banking industry's financial technology transformation, go is still following the strategy, in theory, there are mutual fund institutions exploration in the front, the bank followed the study is, the strategy is clear, as long as the implementation of the effective, it is not difficult to see the effect. However, a lot of things are easy to say and difficult to land, when the real landing, often another matter. Banks' fintech transformation, is still the significance of brand publicity than substantive progress.
Since the bank's fintech progress is slow, the mutual fund giants' fintech seems to be promising. We also see that as early as 2017, the mutual fund giants BATJ have all respectively with the four major banks "industry, agriculture and construction" high-profile marriage. From the point of view of the information released, the scope and mode of cooperation encompasses all aspects. From the more abstract big data, cloud computing, to the more specific through the credit system, credit card online card business, etc., these are also representative of the future direction of development of fintech, but also has the operability.
But in fact, the Internet company and the bank's genes are very different, the Internet company has a high degree of flexibility, so you can quickly access the bank's products and funds. The conservative nature of the bank as a licensed financial institution, as well as the complexity within its system, but it is very difficult to graft the fintech means of the mutual fund giants in their own system, and even if they can, it usually takes a long process and costs a lot of money.
Such costs may be difficult for fintech companies that are only established as technology services to bear. Moreover, from directly carrying out financial business, to retreat to a supporting role to help financial institutions to do financial business, its profitability is likely to be discounted.
Take the ant gold service's borrowing chant after the introduction of cooperative banks, for example, it is understood that the borrowing chant's profit-sharing model is mainly by the bank that provides the funds to collect the loan fee, the ant gold service and then get a fixed proportion of the proceeds from it, although each is slightly different, but the ant gold service to get the proceeds of the general in about 30%.
The average daily interest rate of borrowing is about four ten thousandths of a percent, which translates into an annualized interest rate of about 14.6%, and ants gold service shares 30% of that, which is about 4% annually, and the rest of 10% is taken by the cooperative bank. And compared to the previous ant gold service through the way of ABS, to raise funds for lending, ant gold service profit is greatly reduced. The cost of obtaining funds through ABS is about 5%, and now after working with the bank, the cost of funds has doubled, and the ants' profitability has been cut in half.
Of course, after the tightening of financial regulation, ants may not be able to obtain funds at the same low cost as before, in this case, the introduction of bank funds, is not a good choice. Furthermore, if you can make the transaction volume large enough, you can also make up for the shrinkage of the customer unit price.
But in the transition change, in fact, everything has become unpredictable. However, since the winter has arrived, the transition is certainly inevitable, but as long as you can survive, there is still hope. The cycle of seasons will always pass.