The digital transformation of the banking industry has accelerated. Following the two sub sectors of payment and consumer credit, wealth management business is rapidly migrating to online. In the process of shifting the focus of banking business from offline outlets to online apps and other Internet channels, the “digital divide” that is not so friendly to some people has become a problem to be solved.
On February 18, Li Wei, director of the science and Technology Department of the people’s Bank of China, wrote in the media that the “digital divide” has always been an important ethical issue related to social equity, justice and sustainable development.
When the development of online, platform and specialization of wealth management is in the ascendant, can lessons from the past be avoided
accelerated online wealth management
In 2021, China Merchants Bank took the lead in building an open wealth platform, Ping An Bank Co.Ltd(000001) , Bank Of Communications Co.Ltd(601328) , Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Co.Ltd(600000) and other banks also launched such platforms, strengthening the wealth management function in the bank app. Urban commercial banks have less network coverage than joint-stock banks, and have actively followed up the trend of online wealth management. For example, in November 2021, Bank Of Ningbo Co.Ltd(002142) released the personal bank app2022 version, launched the wealth open platform, settled in and set up the “fortune” zone through cooperative institutions, so as to provide investors with richer products and investment companion services throughout the whole investment cycle of the fund.
The “c-position” advantage of banks in the wealth management industry is stable and significant. On February 17, the International Monetary Research Institute of Renmin University of China released the evaluation report on China’s wealth management capability (2021) (hereinafter referred to as the evaluation report), and listed the top 100 institutions with wealth management capability. In terms of the number of top 100 institutions, 64 banks are listed, ranking “C” in wealth management, and 19, 11 and 6 securities companies, third-party Internet institutions and public fund companies are listed respectively.
Among them, China Merchants Bank Co.Ltd(600036) ranks first with the total holding scale of public wealth management products of 2527.7 billion yuan, followed by Industrial And Commercial Bank Of China Limited(601398) , China Construction Bank Corporation(601939) , Agricultural Bank Of China Limited(601288) , Bank Of China Limited(601988) , Bank Of Communications Co.Ltd(601328) , Industrial Bank Co.Ltd(601166) . Internet agency ant Fund ranked eighth. China Citic Bank Corporation Limited(601998) , Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Co.Ltd(600000) ranked among the top ten.
“The banking system also has the first mover advantage in the layout of physical outlets. The wide distribution of physical outlets allows banks to establish a moat in terms of channel access. Face to face communication helps to better understand customer needs and enhance the sense of closeness and trust, which is more attractive to head and waist customers.” The evaluation report shows that banks also have the advantages of capital investment and talent technology in terms of online channel layout. In recent years, banks generally attach great importance to digital transformation, use modern scientific and technological achievements to innovate financial products and business models, and further expand the scale of customers and service radius.
There are both offline and online advantages. In the field of wealth management, can banks design products and services that can take into account the inclusive population in urban and rural areas?
In the current financial products for rural areas and farmers, banks and other institutions have invested a lot in the construction of credit and rural credit system. The report 2021 on China’s County digital inclusive financial development index issued by the Institute of rural development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences pointed out that from 2017 to 2020, among the five types of county digital inclusive financial services including payment, credit, credit, financial management and insurance, the types of financial services based on Digital loan and digital credit developed rapidly and grew the most significantly. Financial management followed by insurance.
In recent years, various credit products and digital credit products for county and rural areas have emerged one after another, while county “financial management” and rural “financial management” are still difficult to find. In the publicity map of the county’s exclusive financial products released by a branch of a state-owned bank in Jiangsu Province in June 2020, a poem was adapted: “in the old time, Wang Xietang and Qianyan flew into the homes of ordinary people. Inclusive Finance has no rain, and financial management has gone to the countryside to moisten the wind.”
Regarding financial products as “Wang Xie Tang Qianyan” may be related to the reality of unbalanced urban and rural economic development, or to the characteristics that China’s wealth management market is still in the early stage of development.
From the supply side, the person in charge of the financial management subsidiary of Agricultural Bank Of China Limited(601288) said in a media interview in August 2021 that the county financial management scale was close to 900 billion yuan, accounting for 43% of the total financial management scale.
The reporter of economic observation network has not yet counted the proportion of county or rural financial management scale disclosed by other large state-owned banks and joint-stock banks, but from the network advantages of ABC in county and rural areas, 43% may be difficult for other banks to break through the figure.
On the other hand, rural commercial banks, rural credit cooperatives and other financial institutions positioned to serve the rural market are facing the challenge of insufficient supply of investment and research talents and products in the process of net worth transformation of bank financial management. “On the whole, with the end of the transition period of net worth transformation of financial management business market, the differentiation between financial management businesses of rural financial institutions has been further widened, and the smaller rural credit cooperatives and Rural Cooperative Bank of China have withdrawn from the financial management issuance market.” According to the statistics of Puyi standard in the ranking list of 268 banks in China (fourth quarter of 2021), Chongqing rural commercial bank, Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank, Guangzhou rural commercial bank, Jiangsu Jiangnan Rural Commercial Bank and other top ranked rural commercial banks have large-scale financial products, basically completed net worth transformation, wide product system coverage, strong operation and management ability The service level of investors is high, and the polarization with the tail rural commercial bank is very significant
how to activate the county financial market?
Does Internet technology and online trend attract more people to a fair and open platform, or does it exclude some people from the market through implicit screening of education and information acquisition ability?
Online investment provides various groups with more convenient financial management channels, and benefits the elderly, low asset and non first tier city groups. However, it can be seen that compared with young, high asset and first tier city groups, the financial management ability of these families needs to be improved, and there is still a certain gap in online investment intention. Online investment should continue to penetrate into long tail customers. The China Household Finance Survey and Research Center mentioned the above observations in several quarterly reports in 2021.
“In the future, as the financial management subsidiaries of large banks accelerate to seize the market share, the number of small and medium-sized banks with limited investment and research capacity in the issuing institutions will be further explored. In this context, small and medium-sized urban commercial banks and rural commercial banks may sell their products on a commission basis and lay out the whole system product line through a commission basis to increase customer stickiness and obtain value.” According to the report of Puyi standard.
If the future bank financial management market becomes a product developed and issued by large and medium-sized banks and sold by small banks on a commission basis. Then, the pressure to design diversified products suitable for region, multi-year age and family income has returned to the big banks.
The reporter observed that this cooperation mode has been explored in the industry. In 2020, Industrial Bank Co.Ltd(601166) financial management subsidiary xingyin financial management and Fujian Associated Press jointly launched inclusive financial products.
“The financial management subsidiaries of joint-stock banks have professional advantages in mining high-quality assets and creating financial products, but it is difficult for the channels of large banks to sink to the vast rural areas, especially remote areas; the 67 rural commercial banks and rural credit cooperatives subordinate to Fujian associated press are banks around rural residents, focusing on serving the local, county and community.
”The person in charge of xingyin’s financial channel department said, “by giving play to the ‘bridge’ role of Fujian Associated Press, xingyin’s financial management will deliver high-quality financial products to rural areas, truly realize the ‘township to Township’, ‘village to village’ and ‘household to household’ of financial services, and promote the construction of urban-rural integration.”
At least for now, the offline outlets of banks and other financial institutions still play an irreplaceable role. A person from a rural commercial bank told reporters that the more remote and backward rural areas, the greater the role of local banking branches in organizing financial anti fraud publicity and guiding local residents to establish a correct concept of financial management. In the rural “acquaintance society”, bank network employees should first establish contact with customers offline, A lot of work is difficult to promote by online publicity alone.
In the field of wealth management, improving the availability of financial products may also require manual and conscious regulation. In 2018, in order to solve the problem of low satisfaction of bond investment demand in rural areas of Chongqing, aiming at the online auction mode widely adopted in bond sales, the local regulatory authorities innovated and constructed the “cut + auction” issuance mode, allocated a certain amount to specific regions, and established a T + 1 protection mechanism. Promote Industrial And Commercial Bank Of China Limited(601398) and China Construction Bank Corporation(601939) Chongqing branches that meet the conditions for blocking, and Chongqing rural commercial bank will implement blocking issuance to 32 suburban districts and counties, including the Three Gorges Reservoir area, Wuling mountain area, ethnic minority inhabited areas and national poverty-stricken counties.
From 2018 to June 2019, Chongqing’s rural areas sold a total of 3.784 billion yuan of treasury bonds, a year-on-year increase of 1.12 times, accounting for 38.08% of the city’s total issuance, a year-on-year increase of 22.97 percentage points. 95600 people in rural areas bought government bonds, a year-on-year increase of 37.78%, accounting for 43.36% of the total number of people in the city. It directly obtained 592 million yuan of interest income for rural residents, effectively promoted the increase of farmers’ income, helped to solve the contradiction of urban-rural imbalance and insufficiency, and further cultivated new investment demand.
Wang Jun, chairman of the board of directors, said in the report on the diversity of supply and demand of ant fund in China. From the demand side, different customer groups have different demands for wealth management. Various financial institutions have formed their competitive advantages in the market segment by meeting the demands of different customer groups. At the same time, there are still many unmet wealth needs of mass customers in China, and all market institutions still need to work together to provide services.
