With the strengthening of supervision on non-standard deposit innovative products in recent years, high interest deposit products have disappeared in the market.
However, the reporter of Beijing Business Daily recently found that after being restricted by supervision, some private banks did not stop publishing high interest deposit products, but turned such deposit soliciting behavior to “underground” , and launched high interest deposit products to users through online point-to-point invitation to open class II accounts and adding “white list”. The maximum annual interest rate of deposits can reach 4.6%
In addition, although the reporter is not a local user and the territory of the mobile phone number is not in the region, he can still “unimpeded” buy deposit products, and this behavior breaks through the red line of supervision for soliciting deposits in other places. After the interview with the reporter of Beijing business daily, many banks HID or offline the relevant pages
“The deposit interest rate of Xin’an bank is very high, up to 4.6%.” Wang Lei (pseudonym) recently found that Xin’an bank has launched a number of high interest deposit products, which can be obtained by opening the bank’s “white list”. The annual interest rate of these products is usually 1-2 percentage points higher than that of similar products displayed to ordinary users.
What is a “white list”? What are the differences between the deposit products purchased by “white list” users and ordinary users?
The reporter of Beijing business daily contacted a customer manager of Xin’an bank as a novice user and expressed his appeal to buy high interest deposits. The customer manager immediately provided the reporter with the QR code of mobile banking app download and account opening method of Xin’an bank. Name ID number , mobile phone bank of Xin’an mobile bank, and I will give you a “white list “. The account manager saidP align = “center” comparison of interest rates of APP deposit products of Xin’an bank before and after receiving the “white list”
In fact, Xin’an bank is not the first to push up the deposit interest rate by means of “white list”. The reporter of Beijing business daily previously found that Suning bank also launched the “white list” interest rate increase deposit product for users, and the annual interest rate of the one-year product after the interest rate increase is as high as 4.25%. However, it is noteworthy that the customer manager of the bank said, some “white list” users in some regions need an average daily deposit of 50000 yuan to obtain purchase permission
China Everbright Bank Company Limited Co.Ltd(601818) macro researcher Zhou Maohua of the financial market department pointed out that deposits with the same term and the “white list” user products have significantly higher income, which is suspected of high interest
online class II account
Private banks are constrained by “one bank, one point” and have weak ability to absorb deposits. In January 2021, the general office of the CBRC and the general office of the central bank issued the notice on matters related to regulating commercial banks to carry out personal deposit business through the Internet, which mentioned that local corporate commercial banks should adhere to their development orientation, ensure that the deposit business carried out through the Internet is based on serving customers in the region where the established institutions are located.
In order to attract and obtain customers, many private banks are still trying to break the red line on the word “remote” through opening class II accounts online . In the process of investigation, the “white list” users of Xin’an Bank purchased high interest deposits by opening class II accounts. The businesses provided by class II accounts of the bank mainly include deposits, loans, consumption and payment of limited amount, purchase of investment and financial products, and transfer with fixed accounts. If you want to purchase deposit products, you need to deposit sufficient funds into the bound bank card account, and then transfer the funds to the class II account of Xin’an bank.
However, in an interview with the Beijing business daily, the bank denied launching the “white list” activity , and Xin’an bank said, “up to now, we have not launched the” white list “related activities, and we have been doing a good job in building self operated platform customers, mainly marketing for local customers, which meets the regulatory requirements”.
So is that the truth? After opening the class II account, the reporter of Beijing business daily successfully purchased a five-year fixed deposit product of the bank, with an annual deposit interest rate of 4.6%, while before opening the “white list”, the annual deposit interest rate of the same term was 3.5%.
It is also worth noting that at the time of purchase, the reporter of Beijing business daily was not in the place where Xin’an bank belongs, and the mobile phone number and identity information used were not in the area where the bank is located
Products purchased by “white list” customers of Xin’an bank
Li Wei, an analyst at zero one think tank, said in an interview with the Beijing Business Daily that since each private bank has only one physical network in the place of registration, it is impossible to apply for bank cards for users in other places, so it can only deposit through class II accounts. In fact, a few years ago, the industry proposed to liberalize the restriction of “one bank, one store” of private banks, but has not yet been approved by the regulatory authorities
Wang Hongying, President of China (Hong Kong) Financial Derivatives Investment Research Institute, pointed out that according to relevant policies and regulations, some regional private banks are required not to expand their business across regions in order to better serve the development of local real economy, but through such online class II accounts, some restrictions of regulatory policies can be broken, which leads to such a situation in some private banks . At the regulatory level, we can further identify users through financial technology supervision, so that private banks can return to the local area.
There are also many disputes about the boundary of non local exhibition industry of private banks in the market. Previously, many private banks launched similar pop-up windows to remind users. For example, “at present, our bank deposits are mainly aimed at local users according to regulatory requirements” users can’t buy products if they click “no” and can buy products by clicking “yes”. The market thinks that such pop-up window is “formalism”, and transfers the responsibility for their own off-site exhibition behavior to users
For whether there is a situation of soliciting deposits in other places, Xin’an bank responded that the bank has never publicized that deposit products can be purchased online in other places. At present, the bank’s mobile bank uses a joint-stock bank custody system.
Interestingly, after the interview with the reporter of Beijing business daily, Xin’an bank all kinds of exclusive deposit products have been quietly offline, and have not been restored as of the time of press release.
Under the new regulatory regulations, whether to obtain the Internet banking qualification with national exhibition qualification has become an important factor determining the development of private banks. According to the information previously obtained by the reporter of Beijing business daily from insiders, only four private banks, Weizhong bank, e-commerce bank, Xinwang bank and Yilian bank, have obtained the Internet qualification to expand their business in other places, and the rest of the private banks are under the jurisdiction of the local regulatory authorities.
In an interview with the Beijing business daily, a private bank related person said that private banks have no outlets and are in the “one bank, one store” mode. If you want to get a license, you must first ensure that the business can cover the whole country. This requires that private banks have strong online scientific and technological capabilities, R & D capabilities and risk control capabilities. If they do not have these capabilities, the probability of getting a license is basically zero.
the double pressure of rising cost and pressure drop pricing is hard to solve
No matter from interest rate increase coupons to integral rewards, or from “white list” to raising the threshold of deposit and purchase, the original intention of private banks to take the above actions is to improve the price advantage and attract users, these methods can alleviate the pressure on the liability side, but they do not meet the regulatory norms and original intention
Dong ximiao, chief researcher of Zhaolian finance and part-time researcher of the Institute of finance of Fudan University, said in an interview with the Beijing Business Daily that at present, private banks are facing the dual pressure of rising costs and reducing pricing. Due to the different development scale and business direction of various commercial banks, there are great differences in the channels, scale, cost and convenience of obtaining funds, private banks started late, The capital cost is higher than that of mainstream banks, and the pricing ability of loan interest rate of small and micro enterprises is also significantly different from that of mainstream banks
Dong ximiao further said that it is suggested to revise the current relevant measures to facilitate private banks to enter the interbank lending market as soon as possible, carry out liquidity management and obtain capital sources through the issuance of financial bonds, such as approving more private banks to join the national interbank lending market, supporting more issuance of interbank certificates of deposit, and giving support measures such as early declaration and approval of interbank certificate of deposit issuance business qualification, Alleviate the problems of single source of liabilities of private banks.
Xin’an bank also mentioned in response to a reporter from Beijing business daily, “Since the beginning of this year, the credit easing policy has continued to work, but at the same time, the effective demand is weak, and the interest rates of various loans continue to show a downward trend. At the same time, the deposit competition pressure among banks is large, and the core deposit cost is relatively rigid, resulting in a low degree that the debt cost benefits from the decline of interest rates. Therefore, the pressure of net interest margin is a major challenge for the banking industry . As a private bank, due to the limitation of single point outlets, it is depositing There is a lot of competition in terms of payment, but on the asset side, first, we continue to increase support and investment in small, medium-sized and micro enterprises, truly solve the pain points of small and micro enterprise customers, and turn them into highlights of service, so as to stabilize the market with credit investment; Further optimize the combination of income structure and stabilize the income level at the asset end. With the passage of time, the accumulation of customers, the optimization of structure and the level of net interest margin have improved better than that in the previous period “.
Under the pressure of supervision, the way of soliciting deposits at high interest rates in other places is unsustainable. Next, how to make efforts to self operated channels, innovate financial products and reduce debt costs under the premise of legal compliance is still an urgent problem for private banks to consider.
