China-Singapore Jingwei Client, January 16th (Wei Wei) Internet platform deposit business finally ushered in the finale.
On the 15th, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission’s official website issued the "Notice on Regulating Commercial Banks to Carry Out Personal Deposit Business Through the Internet" (hereinafter referred to as the Notice), stating that commercial banks shall not conduct fixed deposit and fixed-time deposit business through non-self-operated online platforms.
In recent years, small and medium banks, including private banks, city commercial banks, rural commercial banks and even village banks, have used the flow of Internet platforms to absorb deposits, and their deposit scale has achieved rapid growth.
This has aroused regulatory attention, and the central bank has repeatedly named "Internet deposits" in public.
After the announcement of this notice, can banks still absorb deposits through the Internet platform?
Will the self-operated platform of small and medium banks be recognized by depositors?
Do not conduct deposit business through non-self-operated online platforms
The industry has long expected the introduction of the above notice.
"This notice was issued earlier than we expected." A private banker told the Sino-Singapore Jingwei client that after seeing the notice, it was immediately forwarded to the work group. The influence of the notice is still being further studied.
This notice clarifies that the most interesting thing is that
commercial banks are not allowed to carry out fixed deposit and fixed-activation deposit business through non-self-operated online platforms, including but not limited to non-self-operated online platforms to provide marketing promotion, product display, and information transmission , Purchase import, interest subsidy and other services.
In fact, as early as December last year, Sun Tianqi, director of the Central Bank’s Financial Stability Bureau, talked about deposits on third-party Internet platforms in a public meeting. He believed that the development of such financial services on Internet financial platforms was an illegal financial activity of “driving without a license”. Should be included in the scope of financial supervision.
Since then, many Internet platforms such as Ant Group, Duxiaoman Finance, JD Finance, Tencent Licaitong, Didi Finance, Tianxing Finance, Lufax, Meituan, and 360you Wealth have removed relevant deposit products from new users.
“The marketization of interest rates is the future direction of development, but at this stage, interest rate management exists in the deposit market.” Zeng Gang, deputy director of the National Finance and Development Laboratory, told the Sino-Singapore Jingwei Client that on the one hand, the market interest rate pricing self-discipline mechanism Bank deposit pricing is managed and it is not allowed to exceed the upper limit of deposit interest rates; on the other hand, different types of banks, especially regional banks, are not allowed to absorb deposits across regions.
"The Internet deposit business just broke through these two restrictions." Zeng Gang said.
He believes that small and medium-sized regional banks absorb deposits across the country online, and break through the restrictions of the self-discipline mechanism through various subsidy coupons and other methods. This will lead to excessive competition in the deposit market and cause two effects: one is the possibility of pricing. It will raise the cost of banks, and then raise the cost of the entire real economy; second, it will cause deposits to flow rapidly between different banks, which will reduce the stability of deposits, which will affect the stability of the entire banking system.
This notice means that the order of market competition for bank deposits will be further regulated, which will help maintain the stability of the entire banking system and maintain the stability of bank financing costs.
It is worth noting that the bank's deposit business on the Internet platform is not completely blocked, and demand deposits are not included in the notice. Despite this, the industry is not optimistic about demand deposit products.
Yu Baicheng, Dean of Zero One Research Institute, analyzed the Sino-Singapore Jingwei client, although the notice did not include demand deposits, but in fact, the deposit products currently cooperating with the Internet platform and the bank have commercial profit margins, mainly for fixed-term and fixed-time activities. Deposit products, so this means that the current Internet platform to provide bank deposit assistance business is "one size fits all."
And depositors are more concerned about whether the deposit products previously deposited are affected?
In this regard, the notice stipulates that prior to issuance, the existing stock business of commercial banks shall be settled naturally when they are due.
According to Dong Ximiao, a part-time researcher at the Institute of Finance of Fudan University, allowing existing business to be settled naturally at maturity will help commercial banks to rectify and reform safely, maintain an orderly and stable liquidity, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of depositors.
Local legal person commercial banks banned nationwide storage
After the "drainage" of cooperation on the Internet platform was cut off, the bank's self-operated platform actually left a certain amount of space.
Dong Ximiao believes that the notice is relatively strict, restricting commercial banks' Internet time deposit business to self-operated online platforms, including official websites and mobile banking.
The notice pointed out that when commercial banks conduct deposit business through various channels such as business outlets and self-operated online platforms, they should enhance their service awareness, provide high-quality and convenient financial services, and actively meet the public's deposit needs.
Among them, "self-operated network platform" refers to a network platform that is independently operated and has complete data rights established by commercial banks in accordance with business needs.
However, not all banks can use their self-operated platforms to absorb deposits nationwide. The notice emphasizes that
local legal-person commercial banks must stick to their developmental positioning and ensure that deposit business carried out through the Internet is based on serving customers in the regions where they have established institutions.
There are no physical operating outlets, and the business is mainly carried out online, except for those that meet the requirements of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission.
Industry insiders pointed out that the above regulations mean that city commercial banks, rural commercial banks, and village banks will only be able to carry out Internet deposit business in the region where the institution is established.
However, further requirements need to be made on the identification of customers in this region.
In addition, as an early tester of Internet deposit products, whether "private banks" can be "excluded" has also attracted much attention.
According to the "Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the China Banking Regulatory Commission's Market Access Work (for Trial Implementation)", private banks should adhere to "one bank, one store", that is, only one business department can be set up in the city where the head office is located, and not across regions.
At present, many private banks' offline outlets are also limited to the head office business department.
Many industry insiders interviewed believe that although there is only "one store", as long as the bank has offline branches, it will be restricted and cannot absorb deposits across regions through the Internet.
According to Zeng Gang’s analysis, there are roughly two types of local legal-person commercial banks that are not subject to regional restrictions: One is the banks that do not have physical branches and conduct business purely online, including private banks, WeBank, Internet Commercial Bank, and Xin Internet banking, etc.; the other is direct banking, such as Baixin Bank, and China Merchants Topology Bank and Youhui Wanjia Bank that are under construction.
"In my opinion, the so-called no physical outlets means that there are no branches. The head office of a private bank has a physical outlet that can handle meeting business." Yu Baicheng pointed out to the Sino-Singapore Jingwei client that most of the private banks and direct banks are Internet Banks lack business outlets, and deposit businesses rely more on the Internet.
Direct selling banks have no regional restrictions on their operations. Private banks have national development and have local requirements.
Therefore, he tends to believe that private banks can acquire reserves nationwide through self-operated platforms, and this issue still needs to be further clarified by supervision.
Small and medium banks' self-operated platforms are difficult to absorb and store
Even if they can absorb deposits nationwide through self-operated platforms, for many small and medium-sized banks, they still face the problems of low visibility and poor customer trust.
Sino-Singapore Jingwei has previously learned that some small and medium-sized banks are beginning to divert third-party platform users to self-operated platforms and increase user stickiness through various activities.
A depositor told the Sino-Singapore Jingwei Client that after the deposit products were removed from the Internet platform in December last year, as an old user, he could still purchase deposit products through the platform.
"I don't really care about which bank it is, and which bank has the highest deposit interest rate." The depositor said that because he was worried that all of them would be removed in the future, he had downloaded several bank apps.
Yu Baicheng believes that next, all kinds of banks need to make rectifications in accordance with the requirements of the notice, and banks that rely more on Internet channels for deposits will invest more energy in the construction of their own Internet channels, especially Internet banks and Internet banks that rely more on the Internet for deposits. Small and medium banks.
Bi Yanguang, a senior researcher at Qicai Think Tank, pointed out that small and medium-sized banks carry out Internet deposits, especially on non-self-operated platforms, in order to acquire more savings, and it is easy to touch the red line of "high interest rate savings". Secondly, small and medium banks use this method. Some of them have broken through geographical restrictions and their own attributes.
"To attract more savings means to do more lending business. This is tantamount to aggravating risks. From the perspective of risk control and the bank's internal control, purchasing savings through the Internet is not conducive to the development of small and medium banks." Bi Yanguang said.
“For small and medium-sized banks, they should examine their own development concepts, no longer use scale as the top priority, think about whether these liabilities are needed or not, and develop based on the idea of creating economic value.” Zeng Gang observed that in the past period of time, Some rural commercial banks are taking the initiative to reduce debt.
In Zeng Gang's view, small and medium-sized banks should establish the concept of sustainable development and explore sustainable deposit growth paths when they do need funding sources.
"Price competition cannot cultivate customer loyalty. Customers will only choose banks with higher interest rates." Zeng Gang said.
He believes that a higher moat should be to provide customers with better integrated services, adhere to the customer-centric service concept, improve the integrated revenue of customers, and enrich the product service system of the retail business. In the long run, these are the things. The core competitiveness of competing deposits.
In addition, Yu Baicheng pointed out that, referring to the practice of the insurance fund industry, after the Internet deposit business has gradually matured, supervision and related risks have been tested, it is not ruled out that the regulator will issue a third-party Internet platform deposit agency license, and then liberalize the Internet platform Of deposit assistance business.
(Zhongxin Jingwei APP)
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