After the ant, Xiaomi Consumption Also took over the small loan, and the direction of rectification of the mutual gold business gradually became clear?

Following Ant Group, some of the credit business of Xiaomi's small loan companies has also shifted to Xiaomi consumer finance. The first financial reporter recently noted that the "Suixing Loan" product service institution provided by the Tianxing Financial (formerly Xiaomi Finance) APP was changed from Chongqing Xiaomi Microfinance Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xiaomi Micro Loan") to Chongqing Xiaomi Consumer Finance Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xiaomi Consumption"). The relevant staff of "Suixing Loan" also confirmed to reporters that the change officially took effect from January 1 this year, but it had no impact on borrowers.

From the perspective of regulatory attitude and a series of new regulations, the rectification of licensed operations of various financial businesses of Internet platforms is imminent, of which small loans and consumer finance businesses that rely on Internet diversion are the focus of regulatory attention, and the rectification of ants "Huabei" and "Borrowing" has been regarded as an important signal. However, as of now, there are not many head Internet companies that have their own consumption companies, and some Internet finance practitioners believe that in the short term, it may still be the main direction to do loans through small loan channels.

It is worth noting that because of the market prospects and the advantages of cross-regional operation, many urban commercial banks have started to play the abacus of consumer finance licenses, and small loan companies are facing the dual pressure of operation and supervision, and the standardization and reshuffling of the industry are still continuing.

Will the loan amount be affected if the "Star Loan" service institution is changed?

With the tightening of supervision and the promotion of a series of rectifications by Ant Group, every move of the Internet financial platform has attracted much attention.

On the homepage of the Tianxing Financial APP, its main "high, low interest, unsecured" personal credit product "Suixing Loan" position is conspicuous. But just recently, many customers found that the service agency of this star product changed from Xiaomi small loan to Xiaomi consumption. According to public information, Xiaomi Micro Loan is wholly owned by Xiaomi Finance (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xiaomi Finance (Hong Kong)"), Xiaomi Consumption Is 50% owned by Xiaomi Communication Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xiaomi") as the major shareholder, and another 30% of the shares are held by Chongqing Rural Commercial Bank Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Chongqing Rural Commercial Bank").

For the change of service agencies, the relevant staff of "Suixing Loan" responded to reporters on the phone that this change officially began on January 1 this year. The reporter noted that according to the "Tianxing Financial User Service Agreement", the current contract signing object of the registered users of the platform is still Tianxing Digital Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Tianxing Digital"), Xiaomi Small Loan, Shanghai Xiaomi Financial Information Service Co., Ltd. and other enterprises, although it mentions "other affiliated companies under the Xiaomi Group", but the Xiaomi consumption has not been clearly listed. However, on December 22, 2021, Tianxing Financial integrated and upgraded its products/services, and the corresponding updated "Tianxing Financial Privacy Policy" mentioned that loan-related services were jointly provided by Xiaomi Consumer And its cooperative financial institutions.

As a financial services platform under the Xiaomi Group, Tianxing Digital was upgraded by Xiaomi Digital (founded in 2013) in October 2020, and the corresponding brand and APP names were also adjusted. According to the enterprise investigation data, the company is 100% controlled by Xiaomi Commercial Factoring (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., which is also wholly owned by Xiaomi Finance (Hong Kong). On the official website, Tianxing Digital Department claims to be a digital technology service platform, the main business includes industrial financial services, personal financial services and capacity output services. Previously, there were rumors that "the business line of Tianxing Digital Technology was reduced and the team was reduced", but according to media reports, Tianxing Digital Department then debunked the rumors, and said that the company only made organizational structure adjustments in the fourth quarter of last year, integrating related business lines into the Digital Industry Finance Department and the Digital Retail Finance Department, which have a credit technology business department, a comprehensive business department, a payment business department and an international business department.

Taking the "suixing borrowing" product as an example, the reporter found after registration that the maximum loan amount of the product is currently 200,000 yuan, and the annual interest rate is 7.2% to 24%. If the identity of "small and micro business owner" is successfully verified, the maximum amount of loan can be increased to 500,000 yuan. According to the above-mentioned staff, in addition to the 360 IOUs that have been removed, the cooperative institutions of the company's products include peers such as immediate consumer finance and "I will lend", as well as many banks such as China CITIC Bank and China Minsheng Bank.

Before Tianxing Finance, Ant Group fired the first shot at the rectification of the small loan business, but whether it was "Huabei" or "Borrowing", it lowered the borrowing limit for a large number of users while upgrading services and brand isolation. Among them, after "Huabei" became the exclusive consumer credit brand of Chongqing Ant Consumer Finance Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Ant Consumption"), the amount of most users fell to less than 10,000 yuan, while the "credit purchase" credit line funded by banks and other financial institutions was closer to the original amount. However, for the change of "borrowing with the star", the staff member said that this has no substantial impact on the product itself or the borrowing user, so the company did not make a special notice on this.

New regulatory regulations are frequent, and the direction of rectification needs to be further clarified

In April 2021, the central bank, the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, the Securities Regulatory Commission, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange and other financial regulatory departments jointly conducted regulatory interviews with 13 online platform enterprises engaged in financial business, including Tencent, Du Xiaoman Finance, JD Finance, ByteDance, Meituan Finance, Didi Finance, Lujin, Tianxing Digital, 360 Digital, Sina Finance, Suning Finance, Gome Financial, Ctrip Financial, etc., and put forward rectification requirements for a number of prominent issues, including the fact that financial business must be licensed. Payment returns to its roots and disconnects improper links with other financial products, credit reporting business should be carried out through licensed institutions, etc., and at the same time, it is proposed to carry out Internet deposit and loan business in a compliant and prudent manner, strengthen financial consumer protection, and supervise and regulate financial business cooperation with third-party institutions. Prior to this, the financial management department had jointly interviewed Ant Group.

The interview was expanded from 1 to 14, and the rectification of Ant Group was officially launched in November last year, and the service institutions of related credit business shifted from ant small loans to ant consumption gold, and the industry generally analyzed that consumer credit will completely return to licensed institutions. Because small loan companies are approved and supervised by local financial regulatory departments and do not have financial licenses, it has gradually become a consensus that the relevant business is taken over by the consumer companies approved by the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission.

However, among the 14 companies interviewed above, only Ant, Xiaomi and Suning currently have their own controlled consumer gold companies, and in the wave of mergers and acquisitions brought about by the constraints of the city commercial bank's off-site exhibition, Suning Consumer Finance is also facing the possibility of changing owners, and the Bank of Nanjing just announced in early February that it would acquire its controlling interest. An internal staff member of the company interviewed said that from the perspective of the industry situation, considering the difference in business volume and the conditions of the consumption company, although the Internet giants are taking the road of consumption, most enterprises can only use the small loan channel to do the loan business in the short term.

However, under strict supervision, the loan assistance business is also facing heavy pressure. The "breaking the information monopoly" mentioned in the above interview means that the data of the platform is no longer used arbitrarily, and as long as it involves financial business, it needs to cooperate with licensed credit reporting agencies. At present, in addition to the central bank's credit reporting center, there are also Baixing credit reporting agencies, Pudao credit information established by JD.com, Xiaomi and Beijing Financial Holdings, and Qiantang credit reporting in which Ant Group and other shares are also accepted.

Earlier, in November 2020, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission and the Central Bank of China jointly issued the Interim Measures for the Administration of Online Microfinance Business (Draft for Comment), which not only made stricter requirements for credit lines, controlling shareholders, leverage ratios and capital contribution ratios of joint loans, but also imposed strict restrictions on cross-regional operations, and the registered capital of online small loan companies had a higher threshold: not less than RMB 1 billion and a one-time payment, Among them, the registered capital of small loan companies operating online small loan business across provincial-level administrative regions should not be less than 5 billion yuan. Subsequently, the rectification of various platforms has accelerated, and at least 8 Internet companies such as Ant, Tencent, Meituan, JD.com, Baidu, Suning, 360 Digital, and ByteDance have increased the capital of their microfinance institutions to more than 5 billion yuan.

Emulating Ant Group's inclusion of consumer finance business in consumer finance companies is in line with regulatory trends and can be protected from the new regulations on online small loans, which is indeed a good model. The reporter noted that Xiaomi Small Loan, as a small loan platform under Xiaomi, has not yet received a shareholder capital increase, and the registered capital has been maintained at 450 million US dollars (about 2.846 billion yuan). For the future fate of small loan companies, Dong Ximiao, chief researcher of CmLG, believes that small loan companies are not without room for survival and development, and the most important thing is to clarify their legal status and development positioning.