Recently, the "Responsible Consumer Finance" standard jointly written by the research group of the Shanghai Finance and Development Laboratory and the Chongqing Supervision Bureau of the State Administration of Financial Supervision and Administration was released, which is the first responsible standard in the consumer finance industry. When the Red Star News reporter evaluated the products of 31 consumer finance companies with reference to the standard index, it was found that the comprehensive evaluation of whether a consumer financial institution is responsible or not, although the evaluation dimensions contained are rich, but not "explicit", and it is difficult for consumers to perceive it directly.
According to Zeng Gang, director of the Shanghai Finance and Development Laboratory, the research team divided the "responsible consumer finance" standard into five themes and multiple indicators, which are social and environmental, consumer protection, consumer promotion and promotion, digital financial business risk management, and partner management. "In today's context of promoting consumption, the financial health of institutions and consumers needs to be of particular concern, and the standards also provide guidance from the dimensions of appropriateness management and responsible marketing. ”
However, the reporter horizontally compared the information disclosed and publicized by 31 consumer finance companies on the market, and found that at present, there are only dimensions such as interest rate setting and consumer protection measures, which consumers can intuitively perceive. The remaining dozen indicators also rely on the voluntary disclosure of annual reports and ESG reports by consumer financial institutions, as well as the strengthening of guidance from regulatory authorities, to provide consumers with an intuitive reference for choosing responsible consumer financial services.
Therefore, the reporter conducted an in-depth evaluation of the interest rate (high and low, transparency) and consumer protection construction of 31 consumer finance companies.
A framework for responsible consumer finance
The interest rate range needs to be clearly disclosed
Among the 31 consumer finance companies, 3 consumer finance companies, including Xiaomi Consumer Finance, Jincheng Consumer Finance, and Vipshop Fubon Consumer Finance, have not launched independent consumer finance APP, only WeChat service accounts, and Ant Consumer Finance's "Huabei" and "Borrow" products are integrated in the Alipay APP, and the reporter conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the APP and WeChat ID.
Horizontal evaluation of 31 consumer finance companies - interest rate publicity
Among the complaints about "consumer finance" on an Internet platform, "high interest" has always been the key word with many complaints. In the actual evaluation, the reporter found that some consumer finance companies have these problems: on the one hand, consumers lack clear guidance and transparency in advance on the borrowing interest rate before applying for the quota, and on the other hand, the actual credit interest rate of consumer finance companies to consumers is much higher than the nominal minimum interest rate, which is misleading.
According to the public interest rate in the "31 consumer finance APP evaluation table" compiled by the reporter, it can be seen that most consumer finance companies provide a specific interest rate range, such as "7.2%-24%", although it helps consumers to initially understand the cost of loans, however, the wider range is not enough for consumers to understand the actual specific interest rate of credit; There is a large amount of moisture. This suggests that despite the published interest rate ranges, consumers may face higher borrowing costs than expected during the actual application process.
What's more worth mentioning is that the APP of Zhaolian Consumer Finance and Hangzhou Bank Consumer Finance, Vipshop Fubon Consumer Finance WeChat account, the interest rate of the three companies only mentions the lowest interest rate, which is expressed as "7.3%", "as low as 8.4%" and "from 6%", although it seems to provide a lower starting point for the interest rate, but does not give a specific upper limit of the interest rate range, which may lead to consumers' misunderstanding of the actual loan cost.
In all the tests, only Chongqing Ant Consumer Finance's product "Huabei" enjoys a 40-day interest-free period, which can reach the lower limit of the interest rate range it advertises, and at the same time, when testing the installment interest rate, according to the different installment periods such as 3, 6, and 12, "Huabei" very clearly gave an annualized interest rate (simple interest) of 11.96%, 15.27% and 15.85% in advance.
Industry experts pointed out that consumer finance companies have made some efforts to publicize interest rates, but there is still a lot of room for improvement in transparency and consumer protection, and consumer finance companies should provide more accurate interest rate estimates and clearly inform the factors that may affect interest rates in the application process, such as credit scores, loan terms, etc.;
Consumer active management tools need to be widely available
In the framework of the "Responsible Consumer Finance Standards", consumer protection is a very important dimension, including customer service (consumer protection construction), appropriateness management, etc. So are consumer protection measures in place for consumer finance companies, and are there convenient management tools to help financial consumers understand and plan their finances?
Horizontal evaluation of 31 consumer finance companies - consumer protection
Consumer education is an important means to improve consumers' financial literacy and help them make informed financial decisions. The reporter's evaluation found that most consumer finance companies provide financial knowledge education content on consumer protection on their products, and there are also a very few consumer finance companies that have no relevant content at all.
In addition to financial science education, it is equally important to provide consumers with management tools to guide and help them establish correct credit cognition and form good habits. Such management tools include interest rate calculators, rational consumption management tools, etc.
In the evaluation of 31 consumer finance companies, the reporter found a more noteworthy phenomenon: 27 companies are blank in this regard, 3 consumer finance companies provide simple interest rate calculation tools, and only Ant Consumer Finance provides a "bill assistant". This is the country's first rational consumption management tool, providing functions such as bill management, spending reminders, and repayment suggestions. Among them, the "Bill Assistant" will display the future repayment amount on a monthly basis on the basis of displaying the progress of the current month's bill, so that users can clearly grasp the loan bills of each month in the future, which is the first attempt of the entire consumer credit industry. To a certain extent, these functions guide users to form more rational consumption habits.
"Consumer protection tools can improve consumers' consumption experience and increase the transparency of financial products and services. Pan Helin, a member of the Information and Communication Economy Expert Committee of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, pointed out that the existence and availability of consumer protection tools is an important indicator of the high-quality development of products and services of consumer finance companies. Regulators should also encourage and guide companies to strengthen the research and development and popularization of consumer protection tools to ensure that consumer rights and interests are protected, and improve the transparency of financial products and services.
Responsible information disclosure needs to be improved
In the evaluation, the reporter also found that many APPs had the problem of not being able to take screenshots. The ability to take screenshots involves whether consumers have the right to keep and share information about the loan.
Apps that consumer finance companies can't screenshot of
Companies such as Bank of China Consumer Finance, Bank of China Consumer Finance, and Sunshine Consumer Finance have set up a function to prohibit screenshots in their apps, which may be due to the consideration of protecting trade secrets and customer information security, however, this may not only limit consumers' ability to record and compare financial products, but also limit consumers' ability to record financial consumption and retain evidence.
In recent years, with the gradual improvement of the personal credit system, the borrowing records of financial consumers will be included in the personal credit report, and when the borrower needs to apply for a mortgage or credit card again, the loan settlement certificate can be issued quickly and efficiently, which can better meet the needs of consumers in loan management and improve user satisfaction.
In the evaluation of 31 consumer finance companies, the reporter found that 20 consumer finance companies APP or WeChat provide users with "settlement certificate" service, which allows consumers to quickly and conveniently obtain settlement certificates.
In fact, according to the standard framework of "responsible consumer finance", the comprehensive evaluation of whether a consumer financial institution is responsible or not includes far more than the scope of this evaluation, but it is difficult for consumers to directly perceive other dimensions, so it is difficult to conduct in-depth analysis and horizontal evaluation.
The research team also admitted that it encountered difficulties in data acquisition in actual research, so there were few quantitative evaluation indexes. On the one hand, it is related to the relatively short development history and relatively thin accumulation of consumer financial institutions in mainland China, and on the other hand, the different degree of disclosure and standards of previous institutions are not uniform, and there are difficulties in horizontal display, comparison and summary of data.
Zeng Gang said, "The release of the standard is just a starting point, and I hope that consumer financial institutions can increase their practices in these responsible areas, increase the frequency of disclosure, and gradually improve them in the future." There are also industry views that the regulatory authorities should strengthen guidance, such as through evaluation and other methods, to promote the responsible development of the entire consumer finance industry, and at the same time, it can also provide an intuitive reference for consumers to choose responsible consumer financial services.
Red Star News reporter Lu Bo
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