Bank outlets are “dying out”?
Recently, two private banks have announced that they will suspend the counter cash business of business outlets, including the counter of business outlets and ATM self-service channels.
This news has been fermenting during the Spring Festival. In the eyes of many people, going to bank outlets to deposit and withdraw money is the basic business of banks.
two private banks suspend cash business
On January 28, Beijing Beijing Centergate Technologies (Holding) Co.Ltd(000931) bank announced that as it accelerates the pace of digital transformation and continuously strengthens the development of online business, in order to provide customers with more convenient and efficient financial services, after reporting to relevant regulatory authorities, it will stop cash collection and payment business from April 1, 2022, The closed channels include the counter of business outlets and the self-service channel of ATM machines.
Customers can handle various businesses other than cash receipt and payment through mobile app and business outlets; If cash service is really needed, it can be transferred to other banks, and Bank of Beijing Beijing Centergate Technologies (Holding) Co.Ltd(000931) will be exempted from transfer handling fee.
According to the reporter of Beijing business daily, from the customer service personnel of Beijing Centergate Technologies (Holding) Co.Ltd(000931) bank, the suspension of cash collection and payment business means that both deposits and withdrawals cannot be made in cash. From April 1, customers’ cash deposits and withdrawals need to be transferred by other banks, but the deposits and withdrawals of non cash businesses will not be affected.
Coincidentally, in early January, Liaoning Zhenxing bank also issued an announcement on the bank’s suspension of counter and ATM cash business. It is called to concentrate resources to improve the service capacity of e-banking and provide customers with better financial services. With the approval of the competent people’s Bank of China, the bank will stop cash business such as counter cash deposit and withdrawal, change exchange, damaged currency exchange and self-service equipment deposit and withdrawal from March 1, 2022. You can also handle fund transfer business through the bank’s mobile banking, wechat banking and other channels.
The bank mentioned that if the customer holds the bank’s debit card, he can continue to handle cash withdrawal business at other banks’ ATMs with “UnionPay” logo, or handle fund transfer business through the bank’s mobile banking, wechat banking and other channels.
is to save offline costs
force digital transformation
According to the analysis, the main purpose of the two banks to suspend the cash business of bank outlets is to save the cost of offline business and concentrate resources on the improvement of digital service capacity.
Beijing Centergate Technologies (Holding) Co.Ltd(000931) the bank said in the announcement that the reason for the suspension of cash collection and payment business is that “with the bank accelerating the pace of digital transformation and increasing the development of online business, in order to provide customers with more convenient and efficient financial services”.
Liaoning Zhenxing bank also said that the purpose of suspending the business is to “concentrate resources and improve the service capacity of e-banking”.
According to the 21st Century Business Herald, a private banker said that for most private banks, the cost of keeping counters, tellers and cash escort may be much higher than that of cash business, and the cost of cash escort may be more than that of cash escort.
Statistics show that bank of Beijing Beijing Centergate Technologies (Holding) Co.Ltd(000931) is the first private bank approved to be established in Beijing, with a registered capital of 4 billion yuan. It was approved to open in June 2017. It is also the first legal person bank in China with the main characteristics of science and technology finance. It was approved to open in June 2017. By the end of 2020, the Bank of Beijing Beijing Centergate Technologies (Holding) Co.Ltd(000931) had 334 technology line personnel and outsourcing personnel, accounting for 64.35% of the total employees.
At present, the importance of online channels to the business development of Beijing Beijing Centergate Technologies (Holding) Co.Ltd(000931) bank can not be ignored. In July 2021, Yang Xinjun, President of Bank of Beijing Beijing Centergate Technologies (Holding) Co.Ltd(000931) , said in an interview that the offline corporate business of Bank of Beijing Beijing Centergate Technologies (Holding) Co.Ltd(000931) accounted for nearly 40% and the online business accounted for more than 60%.
Yang Xinjun also said in an interview, “Many private banks used to do some offline public and retail business, but later basically transformed to online retail business, because it is difficult for a network and hundreds of people to expand public business. Therefore, if private banks want to develop and win customers, they can only serve customers through products and experience by increasing investment in science and technology, borrowing external cooperation and other resources.”
Liaoning Zhenxing bank is the first private bank in Liaoning Province, with a registered capital of 2 billion yuan. It was approved to open in September 2017.
netizens hot discussion: how to deposit and withdraw money for the elderly?
However, the news continued to ferment during the Spring Festival. In the eyes of many people, going to bank outlets to deposit and withdraw money is the basic business of banks. Some old people don’t know how to operate online. Now they suddenly announce the suspension. What about the deposit and withdrawal of old people?
Some people say frankly that if they can’t do general banking business, how can they call it a bank?
However, some people believe that this is the general trend.
the CBRC has just issued a document
in 2025, digital transformation has achieved remarkable results
It is worth noting that on January 17, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission just issued the guidance on the digital transformation of banking and insurance industry (Yin Bao Jian Ban Fa [2022] No. 2, hereinafter referred to as the guidance), and the digital transformation has risen to an industry wide strategy.
The main contents of the guiding opinions include five aspects: strategic planning and organizational process construction, digitization of business operation and management, data capacity construction, scientific and technological capacity construction, risk prevention, organizational guarantee, supervision and management.
The guidance requires banking and insurance institutions to comprehensively improve their data governance and application capabilities. First, improve the data governance system, formulate development strategies, and strengthen system construction, assessment and evaluation. The second is to enhance the ability of data management and build a data asset management system covering the whole life cycle. Third, strengthen data quality control, establish an enterprise level data standard system, and form a data quality control mechanism based on data accountability. Fourth, improve the ability of data application, promote new products, new businesses and new models through data driving, and improve the support ability of big data analysis for real-time business application, risk monitoring and management decision-making.
The guiding opinions clearly put forward the timetable of ” to achieve remarkable results in the digital transformation of banking and insurance industry by 2025″, requiring banking and insurance institutions to “scientifically formulate and implement the digital transformation strategy and incorporate it into the overall strategic planning of the institution”, and clearly link it to the regulatory rating of information technology, Digital transformation has been upgraded from the spontaneous development initiatives of some banking and insurance institutions to the strategic direction of the whole industry.
In this regard, Ernst & Young Enterprise Consulting Co., Ltd. believes that this enlightenment to small and medium-sized banks: digital transformation is no longer a question of whether to do, but how to start quickly and respond to national guidance and regulatory requirements.
In addition, the guiding opinions clearly put forward that “the senior management is responsible for the digital transformation, establish a digital strategy committee or leading group, specify the full-time or leading department, and carry out the overall structure and mechanism design”, “establish a co creation team integrating different business lines, business and technology lines”, and emphasize that the digital transformation is cross department, cross line Cross cutting overall work.
Ernst & Young analyzed that small and medium-sized banks have limited resources and a wide range of digital transformation fields. Therefore, we should pay attention to the overall planning and find the starting point; Establishing agile projects will be the first step to break departmental barriers.
the number of outlets has decreased year by year
bank staff reduced but still important
China Securities Co.Ltd(601066) in a report on Digitization and bank network transformation, the teacher pointed out that with the advent of digitization, the off counter rate of banking business is gradually rising. The digital substitution of traditional counter business makes the commercial bank network face unprecedented transformation pressure, and the number of network points is also declining year by year.
According to the data collected by the International Monetary Fund on commercial banks, in about 100 countries, the number of bank outlets has decreased by 14% in the past 10 years. In European and American countries and South Korea, the trend of bank network reduction is gradually accelerating. According to the data of Bank Of China Limited(601988) Industry Association, from 2018 to 2020 Bank Of China Limited(601988) outlets declined for three consecutive years. In the first half of 2021, the trend of reducing the number of bank outlets continued. In addition to the slight increase of 23 outlets of ICBC, ABC, BOC and CCB, the number of outlets of ABC, BOC and CCB decreased by 94, 31 and 85 respectively month on month.
synchronized with the reduction of outlets is the reduction of bank personnel. In the first half of 2021 alone, the above four state-owned banks reduced 10000, 4919, 3490 and 3916 respectively compared with the beginning of the year, most of which came from the reduction of front desk tellers in outlets. At the same time, the transformation of bank outlets has been high: from 2017 to 2020, the number of business outlets transformed by banking financial institutions was 10700, 8006, 15591 and 12800 respectively.
however, it believes that bank outlets are still important. even today, when digital channels are very convenient, the elderly who are limited by technology and the customers who prefer to be stable and conservative and pursue comprehensive experience are still willing to take outlets as the main channel of banking business.
Many customers still have preferences for physical outlets. In addition, physical outlets can still play an irreplaceable role in complex business processing, Wuxi Online Offline Communication Information Technology Co.Ltd(300959) channel opening and ecological scene integration.
according to its analysis, the transformation trend of intelligent network: intelligence, scene and lightweight. according to the case of China Merchants Bank Co.Ltd(600036) , the bank forms the bank 3.0 model by building a “network + app + scenario”, which can obtain traffic online and feed back offline channels; Through further upgrading and transformation, offline channels can provide a more comfortable environment and better services, so that the ecology of bank outlets is sustainable.
development trend of new outlets:
1) in terms of number: the change in the number of outlets significantly reflects the differences of bank types and regions: the inter-bank differences are reflected in the decrease of outlets of large state-owned commercial banks and joint-stock commercial banks, and the increase of outlets of urban commercial banks and rural commercial banks; Regional differences are reflected in the reduction of outlets in developed areas and the increase of outlets in villages and towns and poor areas.
2) scenario exploration: the general trend of network finance + life integration is inevitable. In recent years, the main breakthrough directions of bank outlets in scenario Innovation are bank government interconnection scenario, pension theme scenario, Huimin community scenario and characteristic theme scenario.
Future prospects of bank outlets: the transformation way with the least risk is to take advantage of the channel advantages to undertake platform service business, such as connecting the government, communities and customers, or connecting upstream enterprises and downstream customers based on a specific scenario (such as cars). In this mode, bank outlets can better “cluster” customers and effectively transform customers in combination with their own business. In the smart outlet mode, the integration of online and offline banking (Omo) is very critical.
Outlets should still use the traffic of online platforms to expand “going out”. In the Internet era, “wine is also afraid of deep alleys”. Bank outlets also need the blessing of Internet traffic transformation to realize the virtuous circle of outlet ecological scene.
