In another foray from the Internet giant into high finance, Alibaba recently announced that one million virtual credit cards will be issued next week. 

An interesting graphic from IDC and WSJ looks at the declining growth rate in smartphone sales in China. China's smartphone market is maturing.

The Basics

If you haven’t been following Chinese online finance innovation industry, here’s a quick brief: leveraging mainly underlying high-yield interbank deposits as assets, China’s main internet giants including Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu have launched online finance products where users can quickly and easily move money out of their banks accounts onto these platforms. Tencent uses their nearly ubiquitous Wechat app as the main user interface which Alibaba uses their Alipay platform to distribute the products; the underlying funds are managed by an external asset manager.

The typical returns of Chinese online finance innovations are between 5-8% and greatly eclipse traditional bank deposits, which yield less than 1%. With this kind of return, it’s not surprising that consumers are moving assets over to the platforms at an astonishing rate with some funds accumulating over 400 billion RMB (~US$66B) in AUM in less than a year making the asset managers some of the largest in China.

At the same time, taxi booking apps are growing incredibly rapidly in in China’s eastern coastal cities – some with the support of the internet giants as well. Over US$40 million of investment has gone into the taxi booking apps over the past two years and it’s not uncommon to ride in a taxi where the driver will have 3-4 phones all running the apps on his/her dashboard.

Bring it together

A key part of the internet giants’ strategy has been to bring everything together in one platform. Tencent, already with a significant user base through it’s ‘whatsapp on steroids’ Wechat app allows you to invest in their online finance product called Licaitong and they have integrated a taxi booking app called Didi Taxi where you can ‘tip’ taxi drivers a pre-selected extra amount to come and pick you up.

Money for nothing and your taxi for free

So, all of the above is well and good. Where it gets interesting is the level of competition in the marketplace and what companies are doing to gain marketshare. A Chinese friend related her experience:

She initially called a taxi via Didi taxi. Didi is running a promotion where you can get 12 RMB (~US$2) back on your taxi ride when you use the app. Base fare in a taxi is 14 RMB (~US$2.33), so she paid 2 RMB (~US$0.33) for the taxi ride. But wait, there’s more…

The taxi driver then asked if she could pay using Alipay and she said yes. Why? Because Alipay is running a promotion where she could get 13 RMB (~US$2.15) back and the taxi driver then likely also received some reward. The taxi driver then gave her the 14 RMB in cash and she sent him 14 RMB via Alipay.

So let’s do the math:

So basically, my friend was paid to ride the taxi. She can then take that 11 RMB and instantly put it on her online finance account where she’ll earn about 6% and the internet giants are out a combined 25 RMB.

Of course in the internet space, we’ve seen plenty of companies providing products or services for free or nearly for free, but the scope with which this is happening in China is amazing. And it’s happening more and more.

Take your lessons to go

Time is compressed here. Group buying developed over years in the US and took another couple to fade away. In China, it was started and finished in less than 3 years. Will taxi booking and online finance be similar?

Although both products are essentially in the middle of a ‘perfect storm’ of a huge potential user base, very tight liquidity (giving high overnight lending / fixed deposit rates) and tremendous mobile and internet penetration and momentum, the winds are shifting in terms of innovation and it has put fear into the financial industry.

Both banks and securities firms are feeling the pinch from internet finance. Banks are facing eroding deposits in the face of gradually liberalizing interest rates, while brokers and asset managers are seeing their customers move to relatively high-return products that carry very few fees.

Although the same ‘perfect storm’ may not be happening in the west, paying attention to how things are developing in China is important as more Walmarts and Tescos move into the banking space. Not that banks were ever really known for innovation, but here in China, it's clear that the innovation is certainly not - which is putting them in an increasingly tight position.

According to the latest figures from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), both commercial banks' balance of Chinese bad loans and the ratio of bad loans increased throughout 2013.

The continuing increase of bad loans is an indication of the challenges in China's economy currently. With an economic transition happening and increased lending on bad loans, this is not likely to decrease in 2014 which will pose even more of a challenge for banks as they face increased interest rate liberialization and other financial industry reform. 

Not satisfied with just taking deposits from banks, online finance platforms are facing more competition from each other.

The sheer size of China's population and geography means that you get some pretty amazing statistics out of it. Couple that with increasing internet and mobile penetration and you have some pretty sizable numbers.

After 18 years of economic development, China’s Tier 2 Banks, mainly city commercial banks, are growing to fill a gap in-between state-owned banks, and rural commercial banks. As part of their growth, many city commercial banks are attempting to expand their branches in other regions, however, the Chinese Banking Regulatory Committee (CBRC) regulations are, in certain cases, holding them back.

The recent tight regulation regarding supra-regional city commercial banks is largely the result of increasing internal fraud cases in city commercial banks such as Qilu Bank and Hankou Bank. The good news is that the CBRC is not prohibiting city commercial banks from expanding supra-regionally. Instead, the approval process is just longer and the standard of regulatory evaluation indicators such as asset scale, capital adequacy ratio, profit margin, and non-performing loan ratios are higher than before. In this case, if city commercial banks attempt to expand outlets in other regions, they need to enhance their internal control and risk management abilities above the required standard.

Because the asset scale and business model vary based on the local economies in each city, the evaluation regulation will be different. If the investment in other regions is excessive, the CBRC will require a higher capital adequacy ratio; if the risk management does not match the fast growing asset scale, the CBRC will restrict the expansion of these city commercial banks. Thus, regulators support supra-regional expansion if the tier 2 banks meet the entire set of regulatory requirements.

China’s tier two banks are some of the more dynamic banks in China in terms of business models and innovation – they have had to be in order to compete with their larger counterparts that typically have much larger deposit bases and distribution networks.

The tier-2 banks are still focused on expanding their asset base and while supra-regional expansion will help them accomplish this, it is not the ultimate goal of the banks, at least not in the near future. The regulations do serve a valuable purpose to ensure that banks’ expansion is based on quality assets and business practices.  

With a wide range of channel choices for retail customers, banks need to be aware of the usage and preferences for each channel which can vary for multiple reasons including the purpose of the transaction, complexity and where the person is from.

On the digital channel, customers usually require a fast and convenient service such as simple transaction or checking an account balance, but for branch service, customers, especially affluent customers require tailored personal interactions such as loan servicing, investment advice, and other complex transactions.

In self-service channels, Asian customers not only need a convenient and easy channel, but also a personalized interactive service to increase their loyalty to the bank as competition is rising and switching costs are lowering, especially in the wealth management space.

These wealthier customers produce higher value for banks, and usually they have a wide range of choices on banking services. In Asia, affluent customers show greater loyalty to their banks, while in most European countries and the U.S., affluent customers have relatively lower loyalty to their banks. Thus, maintaining affluent customers is important for banks to generate higher revenues.

Citi, one of the major players in Asia's wealth management space offers tailored services in Singapore. Their Citigold service provides a dedicated center for nonresident Indians. The personalized interaction improved the loyalty from their affluent customers because Citigold satisfied nonresident Indians’ special requirement on banking services.

However, China is showing a significant gap between affluent and mass-market customers on loyalty because the affluent customers receive much better service from their bank than mass-market customers do.

Banks should not only rely on channel innovation but also focus on improving service on the existing channels. Maintaining the existing affluent customers with tailored service is crucial to the bank since the affluent customers will continually show a high loyalty to their banks in Asia, but enhancing a required service or product for mass-market customers through different bank channels will also increase the overall customer loyalty.  

Kapronasia attended the Battle of Quants Shanghai event on Nov. 13, 2013 in the newly launched Hongkou hedge fund park in Shanghai, China. There were two main topics that we discussed at the event: Chinese traders’ demands for trading platforms and key success factors for China's further economic reform.

Over the past 3 years, online banking in Asia has been growing rapidly. A recent survey indicates that the usage of Internet banking has increased by 28% across Asia in the past five years, and the frequency of online banking usage actually surpassed branch banking in 2012, meaning that people in Asia access their account more online today than they do in person.

In China, there are over 650 million registered online banking customers in the 11 listed Chinese banks, and the combined online transaction volume represents over 60% of total transactions. Systems have matured to keep pace; not only do they provide scalability to deal with the increased transaction volume, but offer increased functionality for online banking in China customers.

In the densely populated areas like Singapore, Taiwan, and India, internet banking makes doing your banking less time consuming. Ten years ago, you may have had to wait hours in your bank to do simple transactions; today, customers can pay bills, transfer money, and even purchase investment products online rather than waiting in a crowded line.

Source: Cebnet, 2013

Although internet banking usage in Asia is high overall, individual countries have varied levels of online banking development. Among all the Asian countries, online banking penetration is particularly low in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, although there are signs of growth.

Online banking usage has started to grow rapidly in Indonesia since 2010, yet, of the 55 million Internet users, about 25% of the population, only 7% of these internet users actually do online banking, which indicates online banking is still relatively underdeveloped in Indonesia. Enhancements in the mobile online banking platforms including better security and ease of use, may help the industry attract more users and increase market penetration.

With the rapid modernization of companies, infrastructure and overall economies in Asia, Online banking in Asiawill continually show a steady growing trend in the next few years because it plays an important role by sharing the operational burden from branches, and provides more efficient service for customers. The current growing trend also predicts that online banking is slowly making branches less important, and its popularity will increase dramatically in the near future in Asia.