Comments on the banking industry: standardize the online marketing of financial products and strengthen the business advantages of licensed institutions

Timely launch management measures to make up for the shortcomings of the system

The people’s Bank of China and other seven ministries and commissions jointly issued the administrative measures for online marketing of financial products (Draft for comments), which put forward 34 specific requirements from the aspects of basic principles and qualification requirements, content and code of conduct, cooperative behavior management, regulatory measures and legal responsibilities.

The measures continue the previous supervision idea of personal credit information on Internet platforms, that is, all financial activities must be included in the supervision, and all financial businesses must be licensed. The Internet platform cooperates with financial institutions to carry out financial business, mainly providing financial product marketing and personal credit information services. Relevant policies have been issued for the supervision of personal credit information. The timely launch of the measures also complements the institutional weakness of cooperation between Internet platforms and financial institutions.

Why restrict the Internet platform

With the vigorous development of digital economy, customers and data resources have increasingly become an important basis for Internet platforms to achieve monopoly. Over the years, some Internet enterprises have accumulated a large amount of customer information, established channels that are easier to reach customers, and carried out business in cooperation with financial institutions. But at the same time, there are also some illegal problems in the marketing of financial products, such as exaggerated income, false publicity and so on. In addition, the previous shortage of Internet regulatory system also caused the market share of some platforms in individual business areas to be too high, resulting in the brutal growth of capital in the financial field. The purpose of the measures is to bring financial activities and businesses into the supervision and control the disorderly expansion of capital, so as to create a market environment of fair competition.

The role of Internet marketing can be divided into two categories according to the degree of business participation, namely consignment and diversion. The former needs to supervise the third-party consignment license issued, and there are perfect laws and regulations to standardize the business, while the supervision of diversion is relatively vague. The measures emphasize that “operators of third-party Internet platforms should abide by the information technology service standard and shall not carry out financial business activities in disguise”, which can be understood as positioning the guiding role of Internet platforms in marketing financial products.

What is noteworthy

There are two items worth paying attention to in the prohibition of sexual acts in the measures, namely, the prohibition of nested sales and the prohibition of disguised participation in financial business income sharing. As for the prohibition of nested sales, it essentially requires that the payment account and the credit account be disconnected to avoid a regulatory gap. The operation of the payment account must be supported by the credit account. With regard to the norms of participating in the profit sharing model, in fact, with reference to the continuous rectification of the loan assistance industry since 2020, some loan assistance platforms have an obvious trend to change to the role of drainage, and its profit sharing model is basically determined to be based on diversion and auxiliary risk control. This time, the Internet platform marketing is positioned as a drainage function, and all you can earn is the drainage fee.

Investment suggestion: in 2022, the economy will be dominated by stability. The cooperation of cross cyclical policies and counter cyclical policies will form a certain support for bank credit supply and help resolve bank credit risks. Although the measures manage the online marketing of financial products, it is essentially a continuation of the policy guidance of antitrust and preventing disorderly capital expansion, which is conducive to continue to strengthen the business advantages of licensed institutions. Especially under the trend that the Growth Logic of commercial banks changes to non interest business, it is more conducive to the development of wealth management business of banks. We continue to recommend China Merchants Bank Co.Ltd(600036) , Postal Savings Bank Of China Co.Ltd(601658) , Wuxi Rural Commercial Bank Co.Ltd(600908) and Bank Of Ningbo Co.Ltd(002142) .

Risk warning: policy changes, weak credit demand and credit risk fluctuations

 

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