Affected by a series of unfavorable factors, the consumer demand in some industries and fields is sluggish. How to reduce the cost of consumer credit and expand the consumer demand of residents has become the direction of the current consumer finance industry.
Consumer finance companies are an important part of the multi-level credit market. By appropriately reducing consumer finance charges and improving product coverage, they can effectively reduce the credit cost of inclusive financial service groups.
Recently, the China Banking Association released the "China Consumer Finance Company Development Report (2022)", showing that consumer finance companies, in accordance with the policy requirements of stabilizing the macroeconomic market and consumer demand, unblock the financial channels for consumer credit to serve the real economy, and continuously improve financial services for people's livelihood. ability and level to achieve steady business recovery.
Reduce fees and benefit the public
The so-called consumer finance company refers to a non-bank financial institution established within the territory of China with the approval of the my country Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, which does not absorb deposits from the public, and provides loans for individual residents in my country for the purpose of consumption under the principle of small amount and dispersion.
Dong Ximiao, chief researcher of China Merchants Union Finance, believes that consumer finance companies are formal financial institutions specializing in consumer finance business and an important participant in the consumer finance market. The business development of consumer finance companies has greatly improved the flexibility and convenience of consumer finance, which is not only effective It reduces transaction costs for financial consumers and enhances the vitality of the consumer financial market.
"Professional licensed consumer finance companies cover personal consumption loans, transfer of credit assets, and issuance of financial bonds. As one of the important supplementary channels for traditional commercial banks, consumer finance plays an important role in reducing fees, transferring profits, and expanding demand. ” said the relevant person in charge of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission.
The "Report" shows that consumer finance companies actively advocate and practice the concept of green, low-carbon and environmental protection, and use modern financial technology to achieve paperless and intelligent full-process green financial services.
At the same time, actively undertake social responsibilities, increase the publicity of epidemic support policies, fully meet the reasonable demands of difficult customers affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic, open up green channels, and introduce a series of support measures such as deferred repayment, interest reduction and exemption, etc., to ensure Support policies are implemented in a timely manner and effective.
According to incomplete statistics, in 2021, consumer finance companies will handle 3.595 billion yuan in deferred repayments for 56,000 customers; 298 million yuan in interest reductions for 247,000 overdue customers; and 163 million yuan in fees for 168,000 overdue customers.
"Consumer Gold's implementation of a series of measures such as deferring repayments and reducing or exempting interest charges is not only an important measure to respond to the spirit of supervision under the background of normalized epidemic prevention and control, but also reflects the social responsibility and responsibility of financial institutions, and works with customers to overcome In difficult times, it will help market entities to tide over the financial difficulties and effectively relieve all pressures." said Su Xiaorui, a senior analyst in the financial industry of Analysys.
Consumer finance companies play an important role in supporting residents to unleash their consumption potential and promote consumption upgrades.
The reporter learned from Zhongyuan Consumer Finance Company that as of the end of June this year, Zhongyuan Consumer Finance had accumulated over 57,409,700 loans, with a loan amount of 202,098 million yuan, and served 17,096,000 customers. The real money and silver that reduce fees and give profits are beneficial to consumers and are for personal consumption. Credit markets have injected new dynamism.
Zhou Wenlong, general manager of Zhongyuan Consumer Finance Company, said that Zhongyuan Consumer Finance set up a loan cooling-off period for the first time in the industry, and launched a seven-day no-reason repayment service for first-time borrowers without charging any interest fees, effectively reducing the credit cost of financial consumers. .
In addition, Centaline Consumer Finance provides differentiated credit from the perspective of consumers and guides consumers to consume moderately within the scope of their ability to repay credit.
The payment terminal, which is closely connected with the usage scenarios of consumer finance, is also actively implementing the action of reducing fees and giving profits to support small and micro merchants.
Hou Jinkun, assistant general manager of Tenpay, said that through continuous improvement of the fee reduction object classification mechanism, according to the classification standards of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, comprehensive judgments are made on enterprise customers based on industry categories and transaction volume, etc., and small and micro enterprise customers are further subdivided to achieve accurate. Help and effective support have played an active role in alleviating the operating pressure of small and micro enterprises and individual industrial and commercial households under the epidemic.
Data shows that from September 2021 to June 2022, WeChat Pay (Tenpay) has accumulated about 3 billion yuan in payment service fees, benefiting more than 20 million small and micro merchants.
New Citizen Service Becomes "Blue Ocean"
In March of this year, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission and the People's Bank of China jointly issued the "Notice on Strengthening Financial Services for New Citizens", aiming at the financial needs of new citizens in key areas such as entrepreneurship, employment, housing, education, medical care, and elderly care, high-quality expansion of financial services supply and improve the equality and convenience of financial services.
Consumer finance institutions continue to innovate consumer credit products and optimize services. The business generated by new citizens' work and living consumption is expected to become the next blue ocean market for consumer finance.
"In the past two years, there has been a lot of downward pressure on the economy. The income level of some new citizens has declined, and their credit ratings have declined. It is difficult to obtain sufficient credit support from banking institutions. Consumer finance companies have played a role in the bottom line to a certain extent, effectively alleviating this part of borrowing. People's financial pressure has a certain role in stabilizing consumption and promoting economic recovery." Xue Hongyan, deputy dean of Xingtu Financial Research Institute, said that since this year, the consumer gold company has comprehensively implemented policies to reduce costs and promote consumption, and increase the support for new citizens. Financial services and relief efforts have fully unleashed consumption potential.
New citizens mainly refer to all kinds of groups who have come to cities and towns for reasons such as starting a business, going to school for themselves, or relying on their children, but have not obtained local household registration or have obtained local household registration for less than three years, including but not limited to migrant workers and newly employed people. There are currently about 300 million graduates of technical secondary schools.
The relevant person in charge of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission said that new citizens are faced with the needs of living and working in peace and contentment, employment and entrepreneurship, renting and buying a house, children going to school, elderly care and other needs, and these needs are real.
In order to meet the demand for consumer credit of new citizens, China Merchants Union Finance precisely provides benefits to new citizens.
Since the beginning of this year, China Merchants Union Finance has launched the "New Citizens' Dream-Building Action", which includes the Happy Industry Plan, the Enjoyment Plan, and the Talented Talent Plan.
Among them, for new citizens who have unstable jobs and frequent changes of places, which lead to difficulties in the turnover of living funds, China Merchants Union Finance launched the Happy Business Plan in a timely manner. Relying on its own advanced technologies such as big data and cloud computing, it can timely and accurately provide amount increase, interest-free, Low-interest and other preferential financial products and services, and actively create more high-quality jobs for new citizens.
As of July 2022, China Merchants Union Finance has served a total of 15.7762 million new citizens, covering 307 cities in 31 provinces, gradually expanding the coverage of new citizens.
However, from the perspective of the new citizen group, the new citizen has a short living time in the city, the transparency of personal information is not high, and there is a lack of effective collateral such as real estate, which leads to the high risk and high cost of financial supply for this group of customers.
"Due to factors such as insufficient credit information and unstable income, new citizens often cannot enjoy the high-quality financial services provided by traditional financial institutions. Therefore, it is necessary to give full play to the advantages of digital technology to effectively improve the service capabilities of inclusive finance. Especially digital technology More mature consumer finance institutions, driven by big data, can better accurately profile new citizens, reduce the cost of acquiring customers for financial institutions, and understand customers’ financing needs in a timely and accurate manner.” The relevant person in charge of the Immediate Consumer Research Institute He said that Immediate Consumption will make comprehensive decisions on intelligent risk control based on multi-dimensional factors such as the occupation, income, and use of funds of new citizens, so as to ensure that the corresponding loan amount is provided while the risks are controllable, and help new citizens to solve the urgent need for funds. For new citizens with high credit and good repayment performance, lower interest rates and higher quotas are offered to benefit new citizens.
Explore the development of long-term mechanism
In recent years, in accordance with the national policy requirements of stabilizing the economy and promoting consumption, the consumer gold company has launched various special activities to promote consumption and people's livelihood, which has effectively boosted the consumption confidence of urban and rural residents and promoted a positive change in consumption expectations.
The "Report" shows that by the end of 2021, the number of consumer finance companies will increase to 30, and the loan balance will exceed 700 billion yuan, reaching 710.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44.2%; the total assets will reach 753 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 43.5%, and the Compared with 2020, when the impact of the epidemic was more severe, there has been a greater recovery.
The two-year compound growth rate of loan balance and total assets in 2020 and 2021 will be 22.6% and 22.8%, respectively, which is close to the average annual growth rate before the epidemic.
"After the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, the growth rate of short-term consumer loans in my country has declined, but it has basically recovered to the growth level before the epidemic in 2021." Dong Ximiao said that there are two main reasons. On the one hand, with a series of promotion of economic stability In 2021, consumer demand will recover, and the growth rate of short-term consumer loans will gradually increase, driving the business recovery and development of consumer finance companies. On the other hand, the consumer finance market has attracted the active participation of Internet platforms, commercial banks and other institutions. The number of consumer finance companies increased to 30, and some of the newly established consumer finance companies developed rapidly, which directly led to an increase in total assets and loan balances.
It is worth noting that in order to enhance the willingness of residents to consume loans and expand the effective social demand, the loan market quoted interest rate (LPR) has dropped many times this year.
In January and August, the open market operation and the medium-term lending facility (MLF) bid interest rate dropped by 20 basis points twice, driving the quoted market interest rate for 1-year loans down by 0.15 percentage points and for loans with a maturity of more than 5 years down by 0.35 percentage points. percentage point.
"Lowering LPR is conducive to reducing corporate financing costs and personal credit costs. For consumer finance companies, reducing financing costs is transmitted to the loan side, which directly reduces the interest rate of loan products." Xue Hongyan said that at this stage, it affects the pricing of personal consumption loans. The cost factors mainly include capital cost, risk cost, drainage cost and other costs.
Under the background of unstable economic recovery and the spread of the epidemic, there is not much room for the risk cost of personal consumer credit to be reduced; the drainage cost mainly involves cooperation with external traffic platforms. The current supervision takes the unified supervision of Internet loans as an opportunity, and should Efforts will be made to rationalize the profit distribution mechanism between the consumer gold company and the traffic platform, and lay the foundation for reducing traffic costs; other costs are mainly related to the operating efficiency of the consumer gold company. In the future, with the improvement of corporate governance and operating efficiency, this part of the cost is expected to be realized Trend pressure drop.
Overall, reducing the cost of personal consumption credit is a systematic project that requires the joint efforts of banks and consumer finance institutions.
In the medium and long term, we should explore a long-term mechanism to promote the release of consumption potential and the growth of consumer demand, deeply integrate into multiple consumption scenarios, optimize product design and business processes, gradually reduce operating costs, and improve service levels.
In April of this year, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Further Unleashing Consumption Potential and Promoting the Sustained Recovery of Consumption". On the premise of continuing to enrich the bulk consumer financial products.
Experts believe that consumer finance companies should increase support and services for residents' bulk consumption, and better play a positive role in consumer finance.
Dong Ximiao said that first, we must develop targeted consumer financial products.
For example, it has launched more products such as home appliances, home improvement, and tourism-themed consumer loans, and enriched the product line of bulk consumer finance to fully meet consumer needs.
Second, we must strengthen the construction of large-scale consumer finance scenarios.
Cooperate with car dealers, e-commerce platforms, shopping malls and supermarkets, etc., and embed consumer financial products to facilitate consumers to obtain financial service support anytime, anywhere.
The third is to regulate the development of bulk consumer finance.
Consumer financial institutions should moderately reduce interest rates and charging standards when costs can be covered, fully and accurately disclose interest and fee levels, and improve consumer experience.
With the rising consumption willingness and demand of residents, automobiles have replaced home appliances and become the main battlefield for bulk consumption.
At present, the state is taking measures to vigorously promote automobile consumption.
Dong Ximiao suggested that the restrictions on consumer finance companies in auto consumption scenarios should be lifted, and support consumer finance companies to launch auto consumer financial products to further promote consumption upgrades and the release of domestic demand.
Wang Baohui