[Financial Interpreter] Internet deposit products have been removed from the shelves, but behind the high profits are "driving without a license"?
Over the weekend, many leading platforms including Alipay, Tencent Licaitong, JD Finance, Duxiaoman Finance, and Lufax App have removed Internet deposit products.
The platforms have stated that “strictly implement the relevant regulations and requirements of supervision”.
The product is only visible to the old users of the purchased product, and the holding users are not affected.
Is "deposit + internet" still a savings deposit?
Let me talk about what Internet deposits are.
It is not actually the deposit product of the platform itself. We used to deposit the money in the bank. Now the bank sells deposit products through a third-party Internet financial platform. The products and services are still provided by the bank. The platform serves as an information display and purchase interface for deposit products. Going is the consignment model.
Although the relationship between creditor's rights and debts is still "depositor and bank", Internet deposit products once made consumers, banks and platforms all seem "sweet".
The platform's "self-contained flow" can bring a steady stream of funds to small and medium banks such as city commercial banks, rural commercial banks, and newly established private banks, and ease the pressure on liquidity caused by insufficient deposits, which is much more effective than pulling deposits at the end of the year; Users have higher income from purchasing financial management, lower thresholds, and convenient access operations; and the platform itself can reap activity and various fee incomes by listing more financial products.
In the past two years, Internet deposit products have ushered in a wave of development.
Data shows that some Internet deposits account for about 80% of their deposits, and most of them are deposits from other places.
Perhaps you still remember the “highlight moment” when WeBank launched Smart Deposit+ in 2018 with an annualized interest rate as high as 4.5%.
That year, the balance of WeBank deposits was 154.9 billion yuan, compared with 5.3 billion in 2017, a 28-fold increase from 2017.
However, deposits are deposits, and if you add the Internet, you can get higher returns. Many people will think: What is the doorway behind this?
Is there any risk?
This concern is not without reason.
The main source of bank profits is the loan interest rate-the deposit interest rate. When the deposit interest rate is high, the corresponding loan interest rate must increase. Then, if the big bank does not borrow money and must go to the small bank to borrow money, it must be the repayment ability, Those with poor qualifications and anxious to spend money are more likely to be overdue, and the non-performing rate of small banks is therefore relatively high. When bad debts reach a certain scale, the possibility of risk events will increase.
So don't look at the bank on the other end. Why is the deposit insurance system introduced?
When the platform brings in a large number of new users, can some emerging small and medium-sized banks hold such a large plate to draw a question mark, if the loan interest rate is not enough to cover the higher storage cost?
Is cross-regional storage violations?
How to divide responsibilities?
Not to mention that some small and medium banks are not even qualified to invest in derivatives.
In addition, for depositors, personal information and account compliance are also facing higher uncertainty.
Such a situation seems to be a “win-win-win” situation. In fact, the more banks use platforms to backflow a large number of cross-regional reserves, the more they are exposed to greater risk and pressure.
In recent years, the regulatory authorities have gradually strengthened the supervision of the Internet finance field, and the entries have become more and more refined.
The tightening of regulations on deposits on Internet platforms also seems to be a sign.
Some time before the deposit products were removed from the platform in batches, the large banks' "interest-based calculation" was also stopped.
From the end of last year to March this year, the regulatory authorities issued two consecutive documents to rectify innovative deposit products.
On December 14, the six major banks issued an announcement stating that starting from January 1, 2021, early withdrawals of products such as personal certificates of deposit and fixed deposits with reliable interest-bearing interest rates will be adjusted from the interest-based calculation method to the The listed interest rate of demand deposits is calculated.
Sun Tianqi, director of the Financial Stability Bureau of the People's Bank of China, publicly stated on December 15 that the liquidity characteristics of third-party Internet platform deposits are different from traditional savings deposits, bringing new issues to regulators and financial institutions.
"Internet financial platforms carry out such financial services, which are illegal financial activities of'driving without a license' and should also be included in the scope of financial supervision."
Under the heavy rectification, from the data point of view, the interest rate of Internet deposits has also continued to decline, and the scale of structured deposits has also been significantly compressed.
The latest data released by the Central Bank shows that the scale of structured deposits has declined for seven consecutive months. As of the end of November, the balance of structured deposits was about 7.46 trillion yuan, a drop of 480.7 billion yuan from the previous month.
The just-concluded 2020 Central Economic Work Conference proposed that financial innovation must be carried out under the premise of prudential supervision.
Finance is meant to better serve the real economy. As an intermediary agency, if the Internet platform does not use the name of a bank to do its own "business", but is unwilling to comply with the constraints of performing financial supervision, it will be a bit bad.
(Text/Yan Yuxin)