The seventh anniversary of China Merchants United Finance: Pratt & Whitney is the boat, technology is the oar, and we ride the wind and waves -

Author Ke Yi

On March 18, 2015, China Merchants Union Consumer Finance Co., Ltd. officially opened for operation in Qianhai, Shenzhen. This consumer finance company was jointly established by China Merchants Bank and China Unicom, two Fortune 500 companies that are leaders in their respective fields. Since its birth, it has carried the genes of finance and the Internet, and it is also destined to become a consumer finance company. The financial industry brings unique innovative power.

China Merchants United Finance, which takes "remain true to our original aspiration and benefit endlessly" as its development purpose, has gone through seven years from scratch and now has more than 150 million registered users and total assets of more than 140 billion yuan. Grow into a well-deserved leading enterprise in the consumer finance industry.

Endless benefits and a bright future are the slogans put forward by China Merchants Union Financial to commemorate the seventh anniversary.

Admittedly, it is not easy to practice inclusive finance, but China Merchants Union Consumer Finance has always insisted that benefits are the future. This is a truth that it has realized through practice after seven years of transformation. The reason why China Merchants Union Financial can continue to ride the wind and waves on the road of inclusiveness is technology.

Merchants United Finance has proven time and time again that using technology to assist finance can really benefit the public better.

“Addition and subtraction” on the road to inclusiveness

The significance of consumption in today’s social and economic context seems to go without saying.

In the past year, problems such as frequent epidemics and shrinking markets continued to exist around the world. However, thanks to my country’s in-depth implementation of the strategy of expanding domestic demand, the scale of consumption and investment continued to expand, and domestic demand continued to be the driver of economic growth. the main driving force. Statistics from the Bureau of Statistics show that in 2021, the contribution rate of my country’s domestic demand to economic growth will reach 79.1.

The reason why consumption has rapidly become one of the important driving forces of economic growth in the past few years is largely related to the development of consumer finance. Zeng Gang, director of the Shanghai Finance and Development Laboratory, once pointed out that the development of consumer finance has obviously promoted the development of consumption and also led to the transformation of the entire economic structure. Consumer finance will become a new driving force for China's economic development.

Along with this trend, the consumer finance industry has also gone through magnificent years.

Since the China Banking Regulatory Commission approved the establishment of the first four pilot consumer finance companies in 2010, the consumer finance industry has gone through several stages of birth, growth, wild growth and then compliance development. The direction is very clear, which is to provide appropriate financial services based on residents’ consumption needs and enhance residents’ sense of happiness.

This sentence is easy to say, but it is a test of wisdom to implement. In order for consumer finance to become a tool that reasonably promotes residents' consumption, it must be inclusive. How inclusive can it be? You must know that the extensive consumer finance model of Dakai Dahe is bound to be dangerous. Although the ideal of "making it easy for everyone to obtain loans" is beautiful, it does not work in practice. The fallen Internet lending companies have fully confirmed this.

In June 2021, Zhang Yangqing, general manager of China Merchants Union Financial, published a signed article in "China Finance", proposing the concept of "appropriate universal coverage and endless benefits" and pointed out the need to achieve inclusive finance. For healthy development, the focus is to achieve a balance between "benefits" to all parties and endless "benefits", so that social value and economic value are positively related.

In terms of coverage, it should be limited, and the scope of customer groups served should be both moderate and precise to prevent problems such as "undue loans" and "excessive loans" caused by excessive sinking and excessive credit; "Benefit" lies in the price. It is necessary to continuously reduce service costs and thresholds. Through the joint efforts of the market, supervision, society and other parties, a multi-pronged approach can achieve a low-profit balance between financial service costs and benefits and achieve sustainable development.

This fully reflects the clear-headed choice of addition and subtraction made by China Merchants Union Finance in terms of inclusiveness in the new stage of development.

The so-called addition is reflected in both "universal" and "beneficial" aspects.

At the level of popularizing the public, China Merchants Union Financial has always been clear about its business positioning, that is, it will continue to deepen the development of financial technology and do a good job in sinking its business, so that long-tail customer groups that are difficult to reach by banks and other traditional financial institutions can also obtain financial services on an equal basis. Judging from the results, more than 60% of China Merchants Union Financial's service customers are rural customers, which is far beyond the sinking level of traditional financial institutions.

From a practical point of view, China Merchants Union Financial focuses on "endless benefits" and continuously optimizes its products and services to benefit the public. It is understood that China Merchants Union Financial currently has two major consumer financial product systems: "good term loan" and "credit payment", which can provide users with fully online, guarantee-free, low-interest inclusive consumer credit services, so these two financial products What kind of scenarios do they deal with, and what kind of discounts do they offer?

"Haoqidai" is an online credit loan product of China Merchants Union Financial, with a maximum limit of 200,000 yuan, a maximum loan period of 36 months, and more personalized categories, such as for High-quality white-collar workers, revolving line "white-collar loan" with more favorable pricing, and one-time high-line product "large-term loan" to meet the temporary consumption capital needs of high-quality customers, etc. "Credit Payment" is an Internet consumer installment product of China Merchants Union Financial. It can realize online application and instant approval, and enjoy up to 40 days of interest-free and up to 24 installments of installment services. It can be purchased in China Merchants Union Financial Installment Mall and in education, medical and other industries. Apply for use in consumption scenarios such as the United States.

In addition, China Merchants Union Financial has also launched a series of measures such as "intelligent" consultation on quotas, "favorable" price consultation, and "hui" consultation on repayment, reducing fees and profits in many aspects, and effectively helping users solve their daily consumption problems. It is an urgent need to promote the breadth and depth of inclusive finance with practical actions.

The so-called subtraction means not blindly expanding or sinking, doing a good job in risk control, taking quality into consideration while pursuing scale, and achieving high-quality development of consumer finance. Judging from the results, as of the end of 2021, China Merchants Union Financial's total assets were 149.698 billion yuan; in 2021, it achieved net profit of 3.063 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.36%; revenue was 15.933 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.32%; the non-performing asset rate was far lower than the industry average. , achieving balanced development in scale, efficiency and quality; its main business indicators are at the forefront of licensed consumer finance companies.

Based on China Merchants Union Financial’s precise control of inclusiveness, it has also achieved remarkable results in cooperation with the industry, and has accumulated many achievements in fund management, asset management, risk control management, smart workplace, etc. Cases of peer cooperation to help peers develop. In addition, in terms of inter-bank financial cooperation, Merchants United Financial has gradually formed multi-channel financing channels such as inter-bank credit, syndicated loans, inter-bank lending, and issuance of financial bonds. It has repeatedly set the lowest interest rate record for inter-bank issuance. The continuous optimization of the liability side has also provided opportunities for Merchants United Financial The continued promotion of fee reductions and profit concessions has laid a good foundation.

Technology Ecology

Finance has never been equal, but technology is making financial services reach everyone more equally. This is why financial institutions have vigorously developed financial technology in recent years and accelerated its advancement. The essence of digital transformation.

The same is true in the consumer finance market where small amounts are fragmented and sinking. Traditional operating methods are destined to result in high costs and low efficiency. Technology is the only effective way to achieve inclusive consumer finance. Especially since the COVID-19 epidemic, the traditional offline and manpower-focused service model of financial institutions has suffered an unprecedented impact. Institutions with single ecological capabilities and weak technology have been forced to embark on strategic transformation. Many traditional consumer finance companies have in recent years Start online and digital transformation.

Compared with traditional business logic that is transformed by digital means, Merchants United Finance has not adopted an offline model since its inception, but has created a new purely online model. After 7 years of iteration, what is used is no longer a certain online tool or model, but a complete set of mature and complete technology ecosystem.

Of course, with the development of technology, we have realized that technology is actually a double-edged sword, and this is also true in the field of consumer finance. When financial services become online, credit risks are becoming paperless and rapid. business processes may be further amplified.

But for China Merchants Union Financial, when a technology ecosystem with digital technology as its core and covering the entire process of financing, customer acquisition, approval, lending, risk control, post-loan management, and consumer protection is established, the ecosystem itself can It is very good at resisting risks and at the same time strengthening its own barriers in the current market environment.

From the perspective of system architecture, China Merchants Union Financial has independently built a consumer finance system based on "cloud technology" since its establishment, and became the first consumer finance company in the industry to "de-IOE". You must know that the small-amount and high-frequency characteristics of consumer finance mean that a large amount of data will be generated, and the operation and maintenance of the data itself means huge costs, especially under the traditional "IOE" architecture. China Merchants Union Financial is the first "de-IOE" consumer finance company in the industry, and has proactively deployed cloud deployment. While ensuring data security, it has greatly saved usage and maintenance costs. This step also fully reflects the success of China Merchants United Finance. Foresight and inclusive orientation at the level of scientific and technological layout.

Public information shows that China Merchants Finance currently has more than 50 R&D personnel. As early as 2017, China Merchants Finance jointly initiated the establishment of the "Advanced Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences - Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences" China Merchants Union Financial Smart Finance Joint Laboratory" is the first smart laboratory spearheaded by domestic consumer finance institutions. In 2021, China Merchants Finance and Sun Yat-sen University jointly established the "Sun Yat-sen University-China Merchants Union Digital Finance Joint Research Center" to carry out scientific research around key technologies in the digital financial technology fields such as artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, machine learning and anti-fraud. Research and industry-university-research cooperation. In 2022, China Merchants Union Finance was approved to establish a Shenzhen postdoctoral innovation practice base.

Over the past seven years, China Merchants United Finance has achieved many leading technological application results.

For example, femtosecond approval can achieve 7x24 uninterrupted service, the credit approval automation rate is above 99.99, and second-level lending can be achieved.

For example, the Fengyun risk control system independently developed by China Merchants Union Financial covers pre-loan, post-loan, credit reporting, anti-fraud, modeling, collection and other risk management processes, including Yunce, Yunzhi, Yunxin , Cloud Shield, Cloud Knowledge, Cloud Network, and Cloud Wan seven major aspects. According to reports, this system can perform intelligent grading, automatic verification, and model scoring based on customers with different risks and consumption in different scenarios. By using technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, it can establish customer risk profiles in just a few seconds and evaluate the risk profile of customers. Fraud, counterfeiting, cash-out and other behaviors are effectively intercepted, achieving millisecond-level high-performance computing of real-time data sources and processing capabilities of tens of thousands of events per second.

You must know that the fraud rate of China Merchants Union Financial is 0.002 BP, that is, there are only 2 frauds among 10 million approved customers, and the average fraud rate of bank cards in 2020 is 0.75 BP. The difference is obviously not one magnitude; in addition, China Merchants Financial’s fraud rejection rate is 2, and major fraud risks are 0, both of which are far lower than the industry level.

In addition, there are AI smart brains coupled with post-loan and customer service strategies, industry-leading anti-fraud machine learning models GPS fishing nets, compliant and efficient digital collection systems, etc., China Merchants Union Financial Technology Ecosystem All links are interconnected, while promoting high-quality business development, they are also getting closer to the ultimate goal of inclusiveness step by step.

Keep pace with the times

Since we stand at the top of the times, we must shoulder the responsibility of the times. Only by keeping pace with the times can an enterprise achieve steady and long-term development.

After several years of anti-epidemic experience, society, enterprises and individuals have established a complete response mechanism. The power of science and technology behind this is quite important.

During the epidemic, financial services remain open. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19, China Merchants Union Financial has actively responded to the regulatory call of "Stay out during the epidemic and keep services online", and has actively provided multi-channel and multi-path online self-service for our customers, launched relevant service guidelines, and provided intelligent services to our customers in an intelligent manner. Provide customers with fast and safe financial services and protection. Through online platforms such as the China Merchants Union Financial APP, customers can enjoy full online, one-stop self-service 24 hours a day, and can easily handle various services such as borrowing, repayment, settlement certificates, changing mobile phone numbers, and binding cards.

In addition, if we want to use financial products and services to bring users happiness instead of trouble and embarrassment, consumer protection and financial literacy education are both very important. Merchants Union Financial has always attached great importance to the protection of consumer rights and interests, and has established a complete set of consumer protection mechanisms. It also carries out financial knowledge publicity and education activities in various forms such as articles, comics, short videos, live broadcasts, cross talk, etc., and has been participating in Shenzhen University for many years. The credit-based elective course "Consumer Finance Innovation Practice" was set up, and the China Youth Network selected a team of college students to carry out the "Three Going to the Countryside" social welfare practice activities to promote the positive energy of finance.

Looking back on the past, China Merchants Union Financial has been riding the wind and waves all the way, and in seven years has embarked on a practical path of high-quality development of consumer finance empowered by technology. With inclusiveness as its original intention, whether it is China Merchants Finance or the consumer finance industry, They are getting closer and closer to this goal.

Admittedly, the truly ideal inclusive finance still has a long way to go. However, when the soil accumulates and becomes a mountain, the wind and rain stir up the mountain. Now that it has been made clear that technology is the right path for inclusive finance to achieve high-quality development in the future, China Merchants United Finance has taken the lead on the road. We have reason to believe in the promise it has made in seven years: the benefits are endless and the future is promising.

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