At present, there are few Internet finance subsidiaries of banks. However, industry insiders said that after the regulatory policies are further clarified, more banks will appear in the form of P2P and equity crowdfunding companies in the future. Traditional financial institutions break through the chaotic internet finance industry, which will have an impact on some platforms and may reshape the industry order.
Change the attitude of supervision from cautious to positive.
Yao Yudong, director of the Financial Research Institute of the People's Bank of China and head of the Internet Finance Research Group of the Financial Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, said recently that supervision is a gradual process, and moderate supervision is also dynamic and open. Now is the era of Internet big data, and the challenges faced by the traditional financial industry are enormous. He said that banks should be allowed to make breakthroughs through subsidiaries or other investment methods in accordance with the principle of two-way access. We can consider allowing banks to set up or participate in Internet finance subsidiaries to engage in P2P, third-party payment, crowdfunding and even e-commerce business.
This statement also triggered a strong response from the market. Although it seems that it is only a regulatory suggestion to allow banks to set up or participate in Internet finance subsidiaries at present, it also reveals that the attitude of regulators towards traditional financial institutions participating in Internet finance business has changed subtly. "When Internet finance was just emerging, the attitude of the regulatory authorities was relatively cautious due to the consideration of risks. However, at present, Internet finance is the general trend, banks should actively or passively participate, and the regulatory attitude will be more positive. " Fu Lichun, chief economist of Gao Dun Capital, said in an interview with the Economic Information Daily.
In fact, many domestic banks have been actively deploying Internet finance business. In March this year, ICBC released the Internet finance brand "e-ICBC" and a number of major products. Recently, ICBC also set up an Internet Finance Marketing Center to co-ordinate the marketing promotion and operation management of Internet finance business of the whole bank. This is the first Internet financial marketing organization established by a domestic commercial bank.
From the way of layout, most banks choose to set up an internet financial platform within the bank. A typical example is E-Home, an Internet financial service platform for SMEs launched by China Merchants Bank on 20 13. At present, the platform is loaded with different products including P2P financial management and money fund. In addition, Baoshang Bank also launched Ma Xiao Bank, an integrated financial platform for Internet finance, on 20 14.
At present, Xin Kai Loan is undoubtedly the most representative of Yao Yudong Bank's Internet finance subsidiary model in China. Xin Kai Loan Company is jointly established by Guo Kai Finance Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Guo Kai Finance"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Development Bank, and a large state-owned enterprise in Jiangsu Province.
Yao Yudong said that the Internet subsidiary relies on the parent company, but it is relatively independent of the parent company, and its business and theme services are separated, giving full play to its scale advantages in technology and system. We can consider introducing mixed ownership in Internet subsidiaries and implementing appropriate shareholding by management to meet the incentive characteristics of Internet companies.
He also said that the development of Internet finance business by traditional banks in the form of financing is conducive to promoting the development of Internet finance industry and upgrading traditional financial services. At the same time, in the future, traditional financial institutions, especially banks, should be allowed to acquire subsidiaries in the market, such as P2P or related companies.
Reshaping the influx of banks or changing the industry pattern
According to industry insiders, with the gradual relaxation of the regulatory policies of traditional financial institutions involved in Internet finance, more banks will appear in the form of P2P and equity crowdfunding companies in the future. Compared with most Internet financial platforms, traditional financial institutions have stronger financial attributes and will be highly competitive in terms of professionalism and risk control capabilities. Moreover, the bank's credit rating is definitely higher than most grassroots Internet financial platforms on the market. Therefore, if commercial banks set up internet finance subsidiaries on a large scale, it may have an impact on the current market structure.
Zhou, deputy general manager of Lending, thinks that P2P companies with large market share, such as lufax and Xin Kai Lending, are independent institutions under traditional financial institutions. Therefore, the establishment of Internet finance subsidiaries by banks will further expand this group and become the backbone of the industry. "For enterprises with large market scale but insufficient financial background, it may cause some impacts, and it will also prompt them to further think about the relationship between finance and the Internet and increase the intensity of standardized management; For P2P companies with small market size, it may have a greater impact. " Zhou said to him.
Xie Qun, chief risk officer of Building Block, said that on the capital side, bank subsidiaries will absorb some customers who pursue high yield but are unwilling or afraid to directly invest in P2P, and will also divert some safe platform customers with low yield and long term, but it will have little impact on most platforms. However, on the asset side, these subsidiary platforms will make full use of the bank's borrowing customer resources and put customers that banks can't traditionally do into subsidiaries, which will pose great challenges to other existing P2P platforms.
While changing the current competitive landscape, Tang, the president of the financial bank, believes that the establishment of an Internet financial subsidiary shows that traditional banks have realized that the combination of finance and the Internet is the general trend, which will help promote the standardization of the industry and enable enterprises that can really improve the efficiency of financial services to survive.
Song Fang, CEO of Guang E Loan, said, first of all, from the perspective of credit, what the P2P industry lacks most at present is credit. If a large institution like a bank enters, it will give a good impetus to the whole industry and help to establish credit and confidence in this industry; For banks, this is also one of the important measures to deal with market interest rates.
Xie Qun believes that if banks set up P2P subsidiaries, then these subsidiaries will bring investors' expectations of the rate of return back to a reasonable range; In addition, the strict risk control of banks will undoubtedly be transmitted to subsidiaries, which will bring a good demonstration role to the P2P market.
Sun Hongsheng, CEO of Crowdfunding Network, believes that from the current supervision system and the concept of separate operation, the impact of the establishment of Internet finance subsidiaries by banks on the equity crowdfunding industry is mainly to play a positive role in customer introduction and investor education. The advantage of banks entering the field of internet finance lies in the credit resources accumulated under the traditional financial model, including enterprises with financing needs and a large number of deposit wealth management users. In the case of rational choice, the best way for banks to enter Internet finance is to make traditional business Internet-based. In the long run, if the bank's internet finance business can allow investment in equity business, then the crowdfunding platform will increase a large customer base in terms of funding sources.
Risk isolation is the most important thing.
Regarding the positioning of banks to set up internet finance subsidiaries, Xie Qun told the Economic Information Daily that at present, the banking platform is a spectrum segment between banks and "high-interest" platforms in the overall P2P market, but its proportion and growth rate are relatively limited. It can be expected that if banks set up internet finance subsidiaries to make online loans, on the one hand, there will be greater competition with the existing market-oriented platforms, but on the other hand, subsidiaries will be affected by banks in personnel and management, so it is not easy for subsidiaries to do these two things well.
A commercial banker admits that the brands of traditional financial institutions can attract online loans, but in terms of providing quality assets, traditional financial institutions are very contradictory. "The market will also question the quality of assets taken out by banks. After all, if it is a real high-quality loan, will the bank be willing to take it out? " The person said. Zhang Jun, CEO of Paipai Loan, also believes that banks also have disadvantages in small loan services, Internet thinking and cost control. Especially for the risk control of small and micro users who have no credit information, it is necessary to use non-traditional data on the Internet to do credit information. In this respect, banks do not have an advantage.
In addition, banks may also face increasing conflicts in P2P banking custody projects. Xie Qun told reporters that if banks set up their own P2P platforms to do fund custody for other P2P platforms, it will undoubtedly make the P2P platforms under cooperative fund custody a little nervous. "This is a normal reaction, which requires banks to give trust to other P2P platforms from system establishment to monitoring. Under the premise that the quality of fund custody services is similar, the P2P platform will also make self-protection choices between different banks. " Xie Qun said. In fact, when some P2P companies choose banks as their fund custodians, they have tended to choose bank cooperation without Internet financial subsidiaries.
Many people in the industry said that the first problem that banking subsidiaries need to solve in the future is how to establish their own stronger Internet thinking, and the second problem is how to maintain better independence. "This is determined by its identity. Since banks carry out this kind of business, their identities are not independent. Therefore, banks must do a good job of fence measures, which is better. " Fang Wei said.