In October 2016, at the Huanglong Sports Center in Xihu District, Hangzhou, witnessed by more than 7,000 Ant Financial employees, the company’s top management completed the transition between the old and the new, and Peng Lei stepped down from the position of CEO. , became the company’s chairman, and Jing Xiandong succeeded him from the position of president and became the company’s new CEO. This signifies a generational change. As I introduced in the last issue, Peng Lei is a very key figure in the history of Ant Financial. During the six years she came to Ant Financial, she led the company to complete the transformation from payment to finance, turning Alipay from a third-party payment company into an Internet financial group, while further strengthening the company's value system. .
Ant Financial Chairman Peng Lei and CEO Jing Xiandong
People who have come into contact with Peng Lei, including myself, feel that he has the ability to understand the other person's heart. This is amazing. In our current popular words, it is called empathy. The so-called empathy means that you can’t just care about yourself, but you must also consider problems from other people’s perspectives. This is easier said than done. . Of course, we can give another lecture on Peng Lei’s role in Ant Financial, and you can also read my book (You Xi’s new book "Ant Financial" will be published by CITIC Press in late March) . Let's put aside the show here for the time being and let it pass.
Let’s talk about two other things.
In November 2016, a “circle incident” occurred in Alipay Campus Diary and other life circles. Some marginal photos appeared in it, which caused a stir. There was an uproar in public opinion. In fact, this traffic diversion method is commonly used in many Internet products, but Alipay's doing so caused great controversy. There is a saying that Alipay is "a good man cheating" this time; November 29 On the same day, Peng Lei apologized while on a business trip in the United States. At the same time, she convened 22 members of the company's management team to reflect deeply and apologized by sending an internal letter.
Let's look at Peng Lei's words used by internal believers at the time
“Wrong is wrong”
“This is the saddest moment in the seven years since I joined Alipay.”
“Thank you for all the piercing voices. ”
Peng Lei also asked
the team to discuss rectification within the team. Think clearly and write down what we want and don’t want, and implement it strictly.
Having said the second thing, let’s talk about the third thing
On December 15, Zhaocaibao disclosed that Qiaoxing Telecom and Qiaoxing Telecom were unable to issue private placement bonds to it on time. To make repayments, this means that the financial products on Zhaocaibao have defaulted. Although Zheshang Property & Casualty Insurance assumed the responsibility of guarantee insurance more than a week later on December 27, people are still concerned about the cooperation between the Internet platform and the Financial Exchange. , especially the practice of selling some high-risk, unqualified products to the public still raises questions, which is also inconsistent with the "little luck" product image that Ant Financial has always promoted to the outside world.
These two incidents that happened in November and December plunged Ant Financial into a vortex of public opinion.
The above mentioned three internal things of Ant Financial. Let’s talk about external things.
In 2016, Alipay’s external competitor WeChat continued to make efforts in the field of mobile payment. At the 2016 WeChat Pay annual meeting, Ma Huateng said that WeChat Pay’s share of the offline payment market exceeded Alipay. Although this It was a unilateral announcement in the absence of authoritative data, but this conclusion is somewhat similar to our daily experience in many cities.
Of course, Alipay still has advantages in large-amount financial management and transfers, but in the field of mobile payments, they are facing an unprecedentedly powerful opponent. Having said that, I want to emphasize a bit of background. In the era of PC Internet, Alipay has always been the best. At that time, Tencent's Tenpay was just a little brother that could not catch up no matter how hard it tried. Although Tenpay cannot be equated with WeChat Pay, as the former is just the backend of the latter, Tencent's payment companies are catching up, which is important for long-term leadership. For Alipay, it is indeed not easy to accept.
Alipay, which started out as a payment company, will feel a sense of déjà vu as we watch WeChat gradually penetrate into the financial field through the social scene. This is just like Alipay, which was on the edge of e-commerce payment more than ten years ago. It has gradually penetrated into the banking field. Now that the same drama is happening again, how can it be better to keep it in your throat?
It would be a lie to say there is no rush. At one time, there was a saying in the market that the future might be a duel between social networking and finance. The logic is very simple. Social scenarios are too rich, and there are a huge number of connections and scenarios. It is precisely because of this concern that from Alipay Version 9.0 of the wireless APP has added the social attribute of "friends", and now Alipay has also added the life circle function of community operation. From last year's Jingyefu incident, we can see Alipay's desire for social interaction.
This kind of comparison mentality will somewhat distort people's behavior. The focus is on the outbreak of the circle mentioned above. However, what Alipay did not expect was that the response to this matter would be so huge, with loud doubts coming from all sides.
But is this matter really so important that it can be put online? When we look at various social software, it seems that there are many more obscure things than Alipay, but why do people only talk about Alipay?
Okay, here comes the root of the problem.
The outside world has labeled Ant Financial. This label is called "finance". What does finance mean? We all have this kind of life experience: professional, rigorous, high-level, or in other words, be polite. When everyone comes into contact with a bank financial manager, they generally hope to come into contact with a reliable, dignified, and steady person. This is also the public opinion. Regarding Ant Financial’s expectations, since entering the financial field, the company has also been shaping its professional image in the financial field to a certain extent, but this is completely different from the temperament it showed in circle events.
This actually reflects an inherent conflict rooted in the company's DNA. We know that Ant Financial started from Alipay. Alipay was originally the settlement department of Taobao. Taobao’s culture is lively and agile. Taobao is a very playful company. Alipay will inevitably carry Taobao’s genes and corporate temperament. , this temperament is contradictory to the stability, rigor, dignity and high profile of the financial industry.
From this perspective, Internet finance itself is a contradiction. This sentence is not said by me, but by Ni Xingjun, the current deputy squad leader of Alipay, nicknamed "Miao Renfeng" , in his words in an interview with reporters, doing Internet finance is a tangled matter. The original saying is that the Internet and finance are contradictory to a certain extent. To do Internet finance, you have to cut a knife between the two extremes of Internet finance. Whether the knife is biased toward the Internet or toward finance is a very difficult question in itself. The art of grasping.
From this perspective, Peng Lei actually does not need to apologize. Ant Financial or Alipay did nothing wrong in the circle incident. The occurrence of this incident is rooted in the contradictions of Internet finance itself. This The seeds of conflict were planted the moment the company transitioned into finance.
Anyone familiar with Ant Financial knows that there has always been a debate between Ant Financial and Alipay. The core of the debate is whether Ant Financial is an Internet company or a financial company. enterprise? This question seems simple, but it determines the future direction of this company. The mainstream opinion of the company is that Ant Financial should be an Internet company, a company that uses technology to change finance. Therefore, Ant Financial CEO Jing Xiandong said that Ant Financial is a Techfin rather than a Fintech company, but the inherent contradictions of Internet finance still exist in the company.
Is Ant Financial an Internet company or a financial company?
What are the characteristics of the financial industry? Financial activities are an intertemporal transaction arrangement and an industry that allocates social capital resources. It has a huge impact (externality) on social and economic life, and this impact is difficult to see clearly in the short term. Risks are hidden and lagging.
What is the Internet about? Only fast but not broken, fast fish eat slow fish, winner takes all, these seem to conflict with financial stability. When the economic cycle is relatively good, everyone will ignore the risks, especially when the Yu'E Bao When a product achieves major success, the company will inevitably be eager to achieve results. Not only Ant Financial, but anyone in any company may make the same mistake.
After we understand this, let’s look at the Zhaocaibao incident. If you have read the relevant news, you will know that Ant Financial has used almost all legal means to deal with the Zhaocaibao incident. contracts to guarantee debt performance, including credit guarantee insurance from Zheshang Property Insurance and a counter-guarantee letter issued by China Guangfa Bank. However, when problems arose, these guarantees initially did not play the expected role. Although Zheshang Property & Casualty Insurance Company fulfilled its guarantee obligations, it was also under heavy pressure.
Why does this happen?
Is it Ant Financial that doesn’t understand? Does Ant Financial not pay attention to customer experience? I don't think so. This company's pursuit of user value is sincere and consistent. The problem may still be that companies underestimate the hiddenness and lag of financial risks. I thought I could avoid basically all risks through contracts, but when the risks actually came, I finally found that many things were just guarantees on paper.
It should be said that the recent series of events have had a huge impact on Ant Financial, and will certainly trigger various reflections within the company. Above, I talked about a series of crises that Ant Financial has encountered recently, and analyzed the causes of these crises.
Moving on to the second part, we have to ask, can Ant Financial come out?
I am more optimistic. Let me tell you the basis for my judgment.
The first is Ant Financial’s organizational self-examination ability. This company has a very strong introspection ability. This is not said by me, but by Li Zhiguo, a former Alibaba employee and now the CEO of Wacai.com.
As can be seen from recent news, Ant Financial has held a series of strategic meetings in the past period. Ant Financial’s strategic meetings are definitely not just openings. Their review pays attention to thorough analysis. through.
What does it mean to penetrate?
For example, in a typical company, if an employee fails to complete a task, usually the company’s review may only look at the superficial reasons, such as the business not being supported, time constraints, heavy tasks, etc. , and Ant Financial’s review will touch the hearts of employees. During the review, employees will talk about a lot of their own inner thoughts. Many people cried during the review. Let’s think about whether this is very tough, Peng Lei once introduced to the outside world the review method of Ant Financial senior executives at Hupan University, which is called self-mutilation first, then shooting. Self-harm is when you analyze yourself, shooting is when you say something bad about others. Let’s think about how tough this is.
We also see from the current news that many old employees of Ant Financial say that the recently launched strategy will give them the feeling they had when there were hundreds of people in the company. What does this mean? I think it is about letting go of the burden and returning to the original intention, and such a meeting will definitely be accompanied by changes in the company's major strategic direction.
In fact, in 2010, when Alipay encountered strategic confusion, it also gathered the knowledge of all parties through the company's strategy meeting and made improving the payment success rate the company's primary KPI indicator. Later, Only then did fast payment come into existence. Although successful experience in the past does not necessarily mean that it will be successful in the future, achieving a strategic understanding must be the first step out of the fog.
From the company’s voice through the media, we can see that Ant Financial must have reached a consensus internally. During this period, Ant Financial must have experienced very intense discussions internally. This discussion touches on strategy, values, and business priorities.
After this series of reflections, Ant Financial first confirmed the important strategy of "not being social". "Not being social" does not mean abandoning the existing social relationship chain, but not deliberately pursuing As a result in the social field, more resources will be put into what Ant Financial is best at, which is payment-based innovation.
In my opinion, "not socializing" is not only a business strategy determination but also an attitude oath for Ant Financial. In China, when people mention social networking, they will definitely think of Tencent. Therefore, "not socializing" Objectively, it also reminds the company itself not to always benchmark against Tencent, but more importantly, to find its own talents.
Ni Xingjun revealed in an interview with the media that in the management review, Alipay re-emphasized its advantages, namely its understanding and insight into business and finance.
Indeed, many of the commercial and financial innovations on China’s Internet began with Alipay. Judging from the known information, Ant Financial will continue to consolidate its advantages in the future, lay a solid foundation for payment innovation, and strive to better grasp the relationship between business and finance in terms of product logic.
What does it mean to understand the relationship between business and finance?
Give a few examples.
For example, guaranteed payment builds trust between buyers and sellers through account terms, which is an understanding. For example, scanning QR code to pay abandons hardware acquiring machines and easily connects offline commerce and mobile payment. This is an understanding. For example, quick payment eliminates the need for users to jump between the online banking page and the shopping page when paying. This is also an understanding. Another example is the ability to buy and sell Yu'e Bao on the mobile phone, opening up the barrier between monetary funds and the consumption system. , this is still an understanding.
It should be said that in the past, Ant Financial’s innovations all came from Sri Lanka. Therefore, as long as it clarifies its own resource endowment, it starts from the perspective of business and financial understanding. I believe that Ant Financial will still have countless innovations to make in the future.
While clarifying the strategy, the high-level strategy meeting also clarified the company's two principles: "Three don'ts at the management level" and "Three dos and don'ts at the business level." The "Three Don'ts" at the management level refer to "Don't discuss without making a decision, make a decision without doing it, and only decide half of it (full discussion); don't put labels, don't easily equate signs; listen completely, don't interrupt at will, and form a first-class consciousness rather than just relying on persuasion”; “Three Do’s and Three Don’ts” at the business level specify that “the right to choose must be given to users and customers (users and customers must have the motivation to tick and cross, and cannot be repeatedly disturbed); we must only do things for others Things you don’t want to do, can’t do, can’t do well but have to do (not to stop others, but to win *** students); let data become the main basis for decision-making (not to make decisions by patting your head) . Don’t sacrifice trust and security (trust and security are the greatest experiences); don’t have a God’s perspective (always believe that others are smarter than us); don’t have no choice.”
Ni Xingjun, Alipay’s entrepreneurial veteran and Alipay deputy squad leader,
Since the end of last year at Alipay, he has assumed the role of interviewing and external communication
It is foreseeable Yes, these principles will become an important guideline for the future development of Ant Financial’s management and business levels. Putting these principles in catchy words will help the company internalize them into their own behaviors, thus Form organizationally consistent behavior.
At the same time as the strategic adjustment, Alipay, a subsidiary of Ant Financial, also experienced changes in high-level organizations. (In Alibaba and Ant, organizational and strategic adjustments are often synchronized.) Alipay established a "class committee system". Jing Xiandong serves as the squad leader, Ni Xingjun serves as the deputy squad leader, and the heads of each business line become class committee members. This "class committee system" was first implemented by Yu Yongfu at UC, and later achieved good results on Taobao.
It should be said that this series of combined punches will help Ant Financial adjust itself, help it rediscover itself amidst the conflicts between the Internet and finance, and find a path that suits itself. .