A mobile phone is equal to a bank. As an important entrance to reach customers’ mobile terminal, app is the main position of bank retail operation in the digital era. On weekdays, it engages in live broadcasting and red envelopes. It is known to accompany the whole process, and various tricks emerge one after another. Especially at the end of the year, another major upgrade has become the norm.
According to the reporter’s statistics, at least six banks, including Bank Of Communications Co.Ltd(601328) , China Merchants Bank Co.Ltd(600036) , released a new version of mobile banking (APP) before the new year. Interestingly, the key contents of this year’s upgrading are highly similar – both express the need to strengthen wealth management and further open up. This means that the focus of APP operation of these banks is switching: getting customers is not the primary goal, but more emphasis on how to activate existing customers and improve stickiness, so as to expand the customer asset scale (AUM).
The reasons are as follows: first, in the era of low interest rates, banks collectively overweight the layout of retail and develop wealth management business to improve intermediate income; Second, APP traffic is beginning to be weak and it is difficult to get customers. It is not difficult to understand that the app, which carries almost all retail tasks, focuses on wealth management and retains users. However, to expand AUM through operating app, the challenge is still not small. It is superficial homogenization, and the internal consideration is the fine management ability of the bank.
get together at the end of the year
On December 20, China Everbright Bank Company Limited Co.Ltd(601818) launched mobile banking version 9.0 in the form of online press conference. The core is to focus on wealth services and upgrade mobile banking from four aspects: wealth management services, professional content services, customer experience improvement and open ecological expansion. This is the second time this bank has upgraded mobile banking in this year.
In fact, since October, at least six banks have released new versions of app. From the perspective of public information, the “leader” is Bank Of Communications Co.Ltd(601328) . On October 27, the bank released version 6.0 of mobile banking, proposed to take the “magic cube” as the design concept, focus on strengthening the three digital service capabilities of open interconnection, wealth growth and scientific and technological care, and create an intelligent and personalized one-stop financial service platform.
In the next two months, Industrial And Commercial Bank Of China Limited(601398) , Guangdong Development Bank, Bank Of Ningbo Co.Ltd(002142) , China Merchants Bank Co.Ltd(600036) etc. released a new version of mobile banking. What attracts the most attention is the “top flow” of retail banks – China Merchants Bank Co.Ltd(600036) . On December 3, the bank held a live broadcast of “fortune night” on app and released mobile banking version 10.0 in a high profile. This is the 10th version of mobile banking released by the bank, focusing on big wealth management and focusing on investment and financing scenarios.
App is the mobile portal of banks in the digital era. Now it has evolved from a tool with only deposit and withdrawal, query and other functions 10 years ago to a platform carrying almost all products and services of a bank. It is not only the main position of retail operation, but also an important carrier to open the retail business level of banks.
Several groups of data can reflect the importance of mobile banking: by the end of October, the sales amount of mobile banking products of Guangdong Development Bank accounted for 82% in all channels, and AUM, a mobile banking customer, accounted for 80% in retail customers; From January to September 2021, Ping An Bank Co.Ltd(000001) retail open bank achieved 42.8261 million Internet customers, accounting for more than 30% of the total retail customers. By the end of June, China Merchants Bank Co.Ltd(600036) app had 15.6392 million financial investment customers, with a year-on-year increase of 29.17%, accounting for 97.62% of the bank’s financial investment customers.
“Moving the front-line business to online, realizing online connection and expanding the scope of connection is the first and key step for the bank to realize the transformation and upgrading of digital and intelligent business model. Its core values include activating the front-line potential, enabling operation and management and optimizing resource allocation.” Recently, Guan Tiejun, general manager of network finance department of Guangdong Development Bank, said.
focus on wealth management and openness
After combing, it is not difficult to find that the focus of bank app upgrading basically converges – they all focus on wealth management and further opening up.
The primary reason for this adjustment is that banks collectively overweight retail and strengthen wealth management business. For example, China Everbright Bank Company Limited Co.Ltd(601818) proposed to further focus on the development strategy of “big wealth management” last year. A big move is to “integrate” its sunshine bank app and mobile banking app, and soon upgrade to version 8.0 to launch a professional wealth version.
At the beginning of this year, China Merchants Bank Co.Ltd(600036) first proposed to the outside world “building a great wealth management value cycle chain”, and the focus of version 10.0 is highly consistent with this main line. “Focusing on big wealth first means more customers. Through app service channels, we can sink more customers and expand the customer base through more functions; secondly, it means greater ecology. In the past, we introduced partner products, but now we need to introduce services.” The relevant person in charge of the wealth platform Department of China Merchants Bank explained to reporters.
Another unavoidable reason is traffic dilemma. The 2021 China Digital finance survey report released by China financial certification authority (CFCA) shows that from the change of users’ frequency of using mobile banking, the users whose frequency of using mobile banking increased in 2021 decreased significantly year-on-year. Even China Merchants Bank, which has 100 million users, had stagnated the growth of the two major app active users (MAU) by the end of June this year.
In this regard, the head of China Merchants Bank’s wealth platform Department said: “the MAU slowdown is a major trend in the industry. In fact, we are not too worried about the incremental change of MAU. Instead, we have removed the” bubble “and can focus our resources on improving effective MAU.
The emphasis on transforming Mau into AUM is essentially that retail business pays more attention to users. For mobile banking, it is necessary to improve the user retention rate and expand the asset scale, which has become a more consistent goal of banks at present, including emphasizing further opening and serving this goal.
fine management becomes the key
It can be observed that in order to activate users, the bank app uses many hard core tricks – for example, live broadcasting, throwing red envelopes, cash back, and even sending out blind boxes loved by young people. In short, it improves user stickiness through various high-frequency scenes.
But the problem is that these are only short-term operation activities. Whether they can retain customers depends on whether they can really grasp the “pain points” of customers. “For bank customers, the most fundamental demand is financial services.” A bank wealth management department told reporters.
Based on this, further strengthening wealth management capabilities, opening the platform and introducing partner products and services have almost become a common choice for mobile banking operations.
The strategy of China Merchants Bank is to explore and deepen the wealth management mode with professional ability; Explore the open platform mode and jointly build the platform ecology; Explore the service mode of man-machine combination. “Back to big wealth management, the first thing is to meet customers’ needs for simple and popular financial services. For example, launch the flow matrix financial services led by ‘Chaobao’.” The above CMB said.
To achieve the above objectives, in the view of people in the industry, it is essentially a fine management competition around products, functions and user experience. The next step is the bank’s understanding and insight into the needs of its own users; The next step is the embodiment of the bank’s financial services and technical capabilities, and the need for an agile organizational structure as a support.
Taking insight into customer needs as an example, the above-mentioned person in charge of CMB said: “we will continue to focus on observing customer transfer, cash flow and other scenes, and find out which scenes of new and old customers will stay longer along the customer’s browsing track. Based on this, we will exercise restraint in some functions.”
Taking the opening capacity that banks are building as an example, when the number of partners and products settled and put on the shelves gradually increases, the requirements for app functions, fund settlement, information entry, update and maintenance will also continue to improve. “Even if you do marketing activities such as robbing coupons, it will involve the concurrency of the whole system. If you don’t handle it well, the system may collapse.” The aforementioned person in charge said.
(Shanghai Securities News)
