Last week, Qiancheng Technology, a start-up in the field of microcredit loans, announced a brand upgrade, shifting from a single business platform to a multi-business portfolio targeting the B-side and C-side. Previously, companies such as Yongqianbao and Zhangzhong Finance also announced brand and business upgrades. And also recently, Hongling Venture Capital, an old online lending platform featuring a large bid model, announced that it will liquidate its online lending business within three years and will transform into an investment bank in the future. This means that Hongling Venture Capital will withdraw from the field of mutual funds. The business model of microcredit loans is different from that of online loans. However, the expansion of microcredit loan enterprise business and the withdrawal of Hongling Venture Capital from the mutual finance field are intertwined, which still reflects a reality: Internet financial business, in terms of lending, is "Small + financial technology", large loans and the traditional banking model lack adaptability in the field of mutual finance. Precisely because of the role of financial technology and the services that traditional financial institutions such as “microcredit loans” cannot provide, microcredit loans have developed rapidly in the country and have gradually become a very typical mutual financial business. Of course, small credit loans are currently facing many pressures such as market competition, funding, and supervision.
Qiancheng Technology Business Upgrade Last week on July 26, Qiancheng Technology held a press conference in Shanghai to announce business and brand upgrades. Qiancheng Technology's previous main business platform was "cash card", which provided small-amount, short-term loan information matching services for young people aged 23-35, with limits ranging from 1,000 to 5,000. In December 2016, Cash Card completed a 100 million yuan Series A financing jointly invested by 51 Credit Card, Hemeng Venture Capital, and Fancheng Assets. In April this year, it completed Series B financing invested by Tiantu Capital and 51 Credit Card. As of now, Qiancheng Technology has more than 10 million registered users, more than one million loan users, and the highest single-day matching volume exceeds 80,000 orders. This business upgrade has upgraded from the previous single business platform cash card to a multi-service platform for B-side and C-side. On the C side, it mainly provides small-amount, short-term, consumption-oriented, and turnover-oriented lending information services. Specific products include "Cash Card", "Cash 360", and "Cash I-Tiao" to achieve risk pricing, gradient services, and loan management services. ; On the B-side, it helps provide risk control review and financial technology output services, mainly including three products: "Credit Cloud", "Qiancheng Data" and "Post-Loan Manager". This kind of business upgrade can be understood as: Previously, Qiancheng Technology has accumulated a certain number of customers, data and financial technology level in the field of short-term microfinance. In the next step, based on these business accumulation, it will expand its business horizontally, in addition to the microcredit loan business. , and also provides customers with loan information management services through "Cash 360" to solve users' needs for finding loan products that are more suitable for them and managing their credit. "Cash I-Tiao" is a scenario-based loan, and currently plans to expand scenarios in areas such as games and live broadcast rewards. Qiancheng Technology has accumulated tens of millions of users, and the proportion of users currently providing lending services is about 20%. Other unsatisfied customers can be recommended other products. This is the logic behind expanding business on the C side. This kind of business idea is now relatively common in the entire mutual financial industry. Judging from recent cases, Yirendai is building an open platform. When a customer's loan demand exceeds the platform's borrowing limit, it will recommend the customer to its partners and obtain a certain commission. Fangwang, a mortgage loan business platform, cooperates with large-traffic platforms such as JD Finance, Baidu Finance, and Kingdee in acquiring customers. These platforms will recommend customers who need housing mortgage loans. On the B side, the horizontal business expansion is mainly based on the established big data risk control capabilities, and provides technical output in aspects such as pre-loan risk control and post-loan collection.
Companies such as Yongqianbao and Zhangzhong Finance have also upgraded their brands before. Currently, major companies in the field of small credit loans include Yongqianbao, Zhangzhong Finance, 2345 Loan King, Quantitative School, and Qiancheng Technology wait. Before the Qiancheng Technology brand upgrade, Yongqianbao and Zhangzhong Finance had related actions. On March 28 this year, while announcing the financing, Yongqianbao announced that its brand had been upgraded to Zhilong Group and would provide services from three directions in the future: First, Yongqianbao’s mobile APP will next provide “Thousands of People, Thousands of Faces” products, providing different amounts and installments; second, create a risk control system with artificial intelligence technology as the core - I.C.E., which uses artificial intelligence to price people's risks, not only for its own products, but also for external output risk control technology.
Third, by building a credit process management platform "Huicheng Bangbang" based on big data and artificial intelligence automation technology, we can independently provide full-process services in the credit process. At the beginning of April, Zhangzhong Finance also announced the upgrade of its brand strategy, from "Zhangzhong Finance" to "Zhangzhong Financial Services", extending from the past single online lending to more fields, exporting risk control capabilities, and will cooperate with banks and consumer finance The company has reached cooperation with Internet small loans, etc. to provide more diversified loan types. Judging from the actions of several companies, they are generally exploring some new businesses outside of small credit loans. Among them, technology output is a common direction, providing solutions to traditional financial institutions in aspects such as big data risk control. In addition, there is the matching of credit products. Of course, each business is still in the exploratory stage, and it is still far from forming a certain business volume and contributing to performance.
Why do they all favor brand and business upgrades? Most of the top microcredit loan companies are upgrading their brands and adding business lines. The business logic mainly lies in: On the one hand, this is the accumulation of users, data, and technology to a certain extent. The inevitable choice of stage. When users accumulate to a certain level, they need multi-dimensional financial services to keep users on the platform. As their income level increases, users will need higher amounts of financial services. If no suitable products are recommended to customers, they will face the problem of losing the customer resources they have accumulated through hard work. Doing various explorations in business has become an inevitable choice. In addition, data resources and technologies have been accumulated to a certain extent, and the marginal cost of use is very low. The external export of technology will not only generate a certain amount of income, but also enable partners to have the technical capabilities to serve the general public. On the other hand, there is the need to enhance business stability, enhance valuation and strengthen brand building. Although the single small credit loan business currently has high profit margins, it faces regulatory pressure on interest rates, service fees, etc., as well as market risks such as fraud. In the future, the industry will return to a reasonable level. In addition to this business, exploring some related businesses based on the already formed business foundation can increase revenue sources, enhance business stability, and is also good for valuation. In addition, some chaos in the industry, such as high interest rates, high bad debts, etc., as well as a large number of media reports, have made the entire industry questionable. Brand upgrade also protects the corporate image.
The destiny of Internet finance is microfinance plus financial technology. Microfinance is a mutual finance business that has emerged in the past two years and has now become an important segment of mutual finance. The characteristic is to use big data and other technologies to make small loans and serve people who cannot be served by traditional finance. There are certain doubts in the market surrounding this industry, such as whether interest rates are too high, whether it is reasonable for low-income groups to increase debt ratios, violent debt collection, etc. However, it is undeniable that the industry is still experiencing a boom period, and several major platforms are still Expand business horizontally. The development of small credit loans mainly follows the basic rules of mutual finance, which is to use emerging technologies to do business that traditional finance cannot do, such as credit services for customer groups who lack credit records. This is the advantage of Internet finance. It is difficult to get around by not betting on financial technology, but doing bank-like corporate business through traditional models through the Internet platform. Hongling Venture Capital is an obvious example. Over the years since its establishment, it has become famous in the industry for its large-bid model, which moves corporate loan needs online to solve the problem. The scale of transactions is indeed large, and the team is mainly composed of senior executives from banks. However, the projects that can be grabbed are often projects that banks are unwilling to lend to, and the quality is average. As a result, Hongling Venture Capital has stepped on a lot of mistakes, accumulated a certain amount of bad debts, and the company is also in a state of loss. At the end of 2016, Zhou Shiping, chairman of Hongling Venture Capital, said that with the introduction of online loan supervision measures, the living space of online loans has been restricted by quotas. In the future, it will focus on financial technologies such as intelligent investment advisory, financial IT, and financial big data. Solutions etc. However, transformation is definitely difficult, and Hongling does lack accumulation in this area. From this perspective, small-amount + financial technology is the standard configuration of Internet finance. In the field of large-amount corporate credit, Internet finance has not yet found suitable technologies to improve risk control efficiency and capabilities. After all, an enterprise is an organization, not like an individual. There is a wealth of behavioral data, and it is difficult for current big data risk control technology to be put to use. This makes mutual funds have no advantage at all compared with banks. The use of big data and other technologies to provide microfinance for individual users is the destiny of current Internet finance.
Under the influence of factors such as funding, market competition, and supervision, the microcredit loan industry may undergo adjustments in the future. Of course, the microcredit loan industry itself also has some problems. From the perspective of industry order, the industry is currently a mixed bag. The improper behavior of some companies has damaged the image of the industry and also caused the industry to face greater regulatory pressure. The entire industry needs to establish healthier and more sustainable business models. From the perspective of funding sources, funds for small credit loans often come from banks, licensed consumer finance companies, ABS, etc. They do not raise funds from the public, which will not increase social risks. However, funds rely on licensed financial institutions, and in terms of market funds, In stressful situations, there may be difficulties in lending, which may affect the development of business. Previously, media reported that the cash loan product "Feidai" failed to borrow money, suggesting that the reason was the tightening of credit policies of cooperative banks. The capital side is controlled by others. It is not a problem when market liquidity is good, but it may become a big problem when liquidity is poor. Of course, whether you can obtain funds from financial institutions is also related to your own risk control capabilities. If your risk control capabilities are recognized by financial institutions, funds can be guaranteed to a certain extent. Judging from the regulatory situation, in the future, regulators may put forward strict regulatory requirements on interest rates and service fee levels, collection methods, collection methods, data privacy protection, etc., which will have a greater impact on the industry, especially if interest rates and service fees are Limiting the level may affect the profit model of many platforms. From the perspective of market development, in theory, the potential customer base of microcredit loans, that is, people who have not been served by banks, may reach hundreds of millions. However, the people served by microcredit loans are concentrated around the age of 22-35, which cannot Lending to minors and students, the demand for older age groups may be smaller, so the number of people that can be served will be limited. There are a large number of small credit loans on the market, and the cost of acquiring customers will be higher and higher in the future. Taken together, it is expected that some inferior platforms will gradually withdraw from the market under market and regulatory pressure. However, the industry will not be overly concentrated. The loan market has always formed a number of service providers at the head. It is expected that the same will be true for micro-credit loan services. There may be a dozen or more larger-scale service providers at the top of the industry. After all, companies that are at the forefront of the industry often have little gap in terms of capital, user scale, technical capabilities, etc. The service differences between different service providers are not big, and it is difficult to replace each other. For users, in The cost of switching between these service providers is not high. It is difficult for the market to form a situation in which a few companies dominate.