Just in early July, 51renpindai was named and criticized on the official website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for collecting personal information without users’ consent. Since September, the big data risk control industry has ushered in the “strictest in history” rectification. First, many big data intelligent risk control companies in Hangzhou, Shanghai and other regions were investigated. On the morning of October 21, an article about the “51 Credit Card” was News of the raid by hundreds of police spread like wildfire, causing an uproar in the industry. Affected by this negative news, 51 Credit Cards plummeted at the opening in the afternoon of the 21st, falling by 34.32 before the emergency suspension.

In the afternoon of the same day, 51 Credit Card’s official Weibo “51 Credit Card Manager” issued an announcement stating that the company’s business operations and financial status remained normal and sound.

At 11 o'clock that night, the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau issued a notice stating that a preliminary investigation found that 51 Credit Card entrusted an outsourcing collection company to pretend to be a state agency, use intimidation, harassment and other soft violence methods to collect debts, and was suspected of picking quarrels and provoking troubles and other crimes. .

At 6 o'clock this morning, Sun Haitao, the founder of 51 Credit Card, posted a long apology on Weibo, saying that the "training and supervision" of outsourcing partners was "insufficient", resulting in harm to individual borrowers.

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Violent debt collection is not the whole truth

With the disclosure of public security information and Sun Haitao’s apology, the existence of violent debt collection has become an indisputable fact. "Outsourcing" is hardly a strong excuse.

It is also worth noting that before the police issued the announcement, the industry once speculated that the investigation might be related to the industry's reptile business rectification action.

Previously, there was a screenshot of a letter sent by a bank to 51 Credit Card, urging 51 Credit Card to stop crawling user information through crawler programs.

Just in early July, 51renpindai was criticized on the official website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology for collecting personal information without users’ consent. On the third-party complaint platform "Juchao", the company's 51 Renpin Loan encountered frequent user complaints due to issues such as cut interest rates, address books, and violent debt collection.

For 51 Credit Card, the current embarrassing situation has already been foreshadowed.

The operating entity of 51 Credit Card, established in May 2012, is Hangzhou Enniu Network Technology Co., Ltd., which provides users with the underlying foundation of cross-bank multi-card management services from the wool information platform to the provision of comprehensive credit card services. It is using a crawler to capture credit card billing information. After the credit card bill management software "51 Credit Card Manager" tasted the benefits, it launched products such as "51 Renpin", "51 Renpin Loan" and "Give You Flower". Its business covers personal credit management services, credit card technology services, and online credit Matchmaking and investment services.

It can be seen that its development path is to obtain customers through credit card management tools and realize cash through loan matching. Its partners include a number of P2P and licensed financial institutions.

Looking at its annual report, personal credit management services only account for a small part of 51 Credit Card’s revenue, while “credit matching and investment services” contribute the majority of its revenue.

According to 51 Credit Card’s previous financial reports, from 2015 to mid-2019, its credit matching and service fee income were 17 million yuan, 384 million yuan, 1.627 billion yuan, and 2.056 billion yuan, respectively accounting for the overall income. The total ratio is approximately 18.67, 67.28, 71.73, and 73.1, and the contribution of matching business to revenue is increasing year by year. In the first half of 2019, this figure dropped to 57.4, but it is still the absolute top revenue.

Changing the DNA of a company does not happen overnight.

After the news broke yesterday, a 51 Credit Card user reported to Cross Finance that after trying to cancel an APP account that he had not used for many years, 51 Credit Card asked him to provide photos of the front and back of his ID card and an image verification of holding the ID card. and other important personal privacy data. The necessity of collecting this data during the account cancellation process has been questioned by users and professionals.

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The winter of mutual funds due to compliance upgrades

Since September, the big data risk control industry has ushered in the “most stringent” rectification in history. First, Previously, a number of big data intelligent risk control companies in Hangzhou, Shanghai and other regions were investigated. Executives of Moxion Technology and Xinyan Technology were taken away one after another. Leading institutions such as Tongdun Technology, Bairong Yunchuang, and Juxinli were also Trapped to varying degrees. Affected by this, many big data risk control service providers such as Pengyuan Credit Information, Lehmu Credit Information, and White Knight have suspended some services.

It is worth noting that many media reported that the reason why the police investigated the big data risk control platform was not entirely to protect the security of personal information, but more likely to crack down on "routine loans". Big data companies It provides systems, data, and risk control for the cash loan platform, which facilitates the platform's diversion and customer acquisition, and carries out illegal and violent collection by crawling users' operator data.

It is worth mentioning that the domestic big data industry almost grew up with the online lending industry. The biggest root cause of compliance problems lies in the mismatch between the scale of the online lending platform and its operational and technical capabilities. Compared with borrowers from traditional banks, borrowers on online loan platforms lack credit data and have relatively weak repayment capabilities, and platforms must conduct risk control and review of transactions. In order to meet the platform's needs for technology and data, big data has been born. Companies, these third-party data companies support the risk control of online lending platforms by crawling user information, and help them use big data to further realize the post-loan collection process.

This means that crawlers, as the main technical means, have become an accomplice in the illegal and criminal activities of "routine loans". Crawling borrower information through big data to achieve customer acquisition, risk control and collection has given rise to a series of illegal activities such as data abuse, user privacy infringement, loan sharking, and violent collection.

It is worth mentioning that on the day of the 51 Credit Card incident, the National Anti-Crime Office held a press conference. The Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, and the Ministry of Justice jointly studied and formulated the "About Handling "Opinions on Several Issues in Criminal Cases of Illegal Lending" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), according to the "Opinions", serious illegal lending will be convicted and punished for illegal business crimes, and will be effective from October 21, 2019.

Among them, the "Opinions" will target illegal loan sharking, which is the most harmful to society, and make it clear that illegal loans with a single actual annual interest rate exceeding 36 will be used as the benchmark for conviction and sentencing, and the illegal loan amount will be used as the benchmark. Specific standards for "serious circumstances" and "particularly serious circumstances" are stipulated in terms of aspects such as the amount of illegal income, the amount of illegal loans and the harmful consequences caused.

At the same time, in terms of prohibiting violent debt collection, the "Opinions" pointed out that in order to forcibly collect debts arising from illegal lending, intentional homicide, intentional injury, illegal detention, intentional destruction of property, provoking quarrels and provoking troubles, etc. Any behavior that constitutes a crime shall be punished for multiple crimes. As well as gathering, instigating, hiring others to use means such as nuisance, entanglement, noise, and gathering crowds to forcibly demand debts, it does not constitute a separate crime. However, if the illegal lending behavior constitutes the crime of illegal business, the crime of illegal business shall be punished as appropriate in accordance with the provisions of the crime of illegal business. punishment.

Whether it is collection or the collection and use of big data, regulatory compliance requirements continue to increase. The true implementation of compliance may be the beginning of the healthy development of financial technology. However, the cold winter has not yet begun, and the road is blocked and long.