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Press Release

Insight - Kapronasia

Many countries in Asia have been traditionally cash and brick focused: customers have been used to holding and using physical cash and visiting the brick and mortar branches. That’s changing rapidly as competitive pressures and demands from an increasingly sophisticated customer base are driving banks to create a new normal in both business model and customer interaction. A key part of that transformation will come from self-service innovation, yet self-service means different things in different countries.

In Japan, regular bank ATMs actually have limited hours of service both during the week and on the weekends. Historically this has been down to increased costs in terms of security / safety of both the machines and people and less demand from customers outside of normal business hours, especially in rural areas.

A certain subset of Japanese customers however, have, over the years, increasingly looked for “Anytime, anywhere” banking services. In early 2007, Japanese Seven bank brought ATMs into Japanese 7-Eleven convenience stores; the integration was made easier by the fact that 7-Eleven stores and Seven Bank itself are both owned by Ito Yokado. Japan actually has the largest absolute number of 7-Eleven stores in the world so now customers can withdraw money any time of day or night with their debit and credit card in more than 18,000 ATMs installed in 7-Eleven stores in Japan.

These ATMs also process remittances from Japan to other countries allowing Seven bank’s customers to send money nearly anywhere in the world, at any time of the day. It provides a convenient cash service for their customers and also satisfies their remittance needs, which means a more satisfied customer and bank.

ATMs in China have never had challenges of hours as most of them, unless they run out of cash, run 24/7 in nearly all locations. What has changed is the functionality. 10 years ago if you wanted to transfer money from one person to another, you faced a potentially hour plus wait at your local bank branch and many times had to transact in cash unless you wanted to go through the paper work.

Today you can use a Chinese ATM to directly pay anyone who has an account with that bank. Further, even if you don’t know their account number, you can even input their mobile phone number if it is associated with the account.

Although many of the changes in self-service aren’t major, they are tailored to the local customers and what might be an issue in one geography might not be in another. They can also result in increased revenue, such as the surcharge on out of hours transactions at the 7-Elevens in Japan, and decreased costs, such as fewer branch visits in China’s case, but they aren’t one size fits all.

Many financial institutions have come to Asia with this ‘one size fits all’ mentality and really struggled to gain market share and drive business. Not having the right mix can result in decreased revenue and incredible costs from poor strategies, but can also alienate customers which gives the bank a different problem: not how to move customers to self-service, but even how to have customers in the first place.

This blog is part of the Oracle / Kapronasia series on Future Finance. For more information, please visit the Future Finance blog at here.

According to the figures from the Securities Association of China, the assets under management and revenue earned by Chinese securities companies asset management businesses has grown dramatically from the 1h 2011 to the 1h 2013. The total AUM in the 1h 2013 is about 13.75 times of the figure in the 1h 2011, which reflects the thriving of client asset management business of securities companies in China.

One reason for that for the dramatic expansion is the demand from clients. As China has a growing number of high-net-worth individuals and the investment options are relatively narrow compared to western countries, asset management business provided by local securities companies are thought to be a good choice. Market analysts estimated that the figures will keep growing exponentially for the following few years; at least the current market is far below saturation. 

 

Client asset management business of Chinese securities companies CNYbn

 

1h 2011

2h 2011

1h 2012

2h 2012

1h 2013

Revenue earned by securities companies

0.898

1.215

1.044

1.632

2.88

Total AUM

248.673

281.868

480.207

1890

3420

 

Source: Securities Association of China, 2011-2013

In our previous commentary, we looked at the future of Bitcoin in China and its potential to become a widely adopted and used virtual currency. One aspect of its development which will be critical if the fledgling currency is to really gain traction is the maturation of Bitcoin as a transaction platform.

The growth of the property and housing market is a key part of Chinese economic growth, but at the same time, there is increasing worries of a major bubble.

The US Federal Reserve (Fed) announcement that it will continue the program of quantitative easing (QE) boosted the Asian stock market, but many now worry that this is only a temporary fix.

A look at the key players and relationships in China’s mobile payments space

China’s expanding mobile payment market

By the end of 2012, there were more than 1.1 billion mobile phone users, and 360 million smartphone users in China representing both strong mobile phone penetration as well as a significant increase in smartphone penetration. With smartphones in the hands of more Chinese consumers, the mobile payment industry in China is nearing its watershed moment – as consumers increasingly use their mobile phones not only as communication devices, but payment tools.

In February 2013, China became the second largest active Bitcoin market globally as measured by wallet downloads. This has attracted new Bitcoin based businesses to China and what could be a massive market for the developing virtual currency. An example is Bitfash, which was launched in April 2013 and became the first online shopping platform for clothes to accept Bitcoin as payment; one of its key target markets is China. However, will Bitcoin really take off in China? Can the Chinese consumer shift the value of the virtual currency as they did with gold earlier in 2013? What will the government eventually inevitably do to control the currency? It could be a potentially huge market, but will largely depend on its payment function development, the attitude of the Chinese government and the stability of Bitcoin's value.

In another of what is appearing to be a series of missteps for the HK bank in mainland China, the organisation has further alienated a key segment of their Chinese customer base by tripling basic account fees for mainland China SMEs. This comes on the heels of moving away from individual account managers and shifting any customer service for SMEs to automated help lines in 2011.

As China moves along its path of financial reform, starting with the interest rate reform and the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in Shanghai, it is not hard to see equity investors moving towards Shanghai-based firms and FTZ-related firms.

According to the latest figure from the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SHSE) the trading volume of ETFs in SHSE increased dramatically from the beginning of 2012 to August 2013. It is quite obvious from the data that 2013 is far larger than the figure in 2012. The lowest point from this period is April 2012, when the ETF trading volume was only CNY16.232bn; The peak was in June, 2013, with a trading volume of CNY68.712bn, which is over 4 times compared to the figure at the bottom in 2012. Besides, the aggregate trading volume for the previous 8 months is CNY449.687bn, which is far larger than the whole year figure of 2012 of CNY302.658bn. As ETFs are very important components in investors’ portfolio, we estimate that there will be more ETFs launched and the trading volume could be larger as we close out 2013 and move into 2014.

 

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