Bank Loan Officer: Chasing to Lending|Financial Workplace Illustrated

Economic Observer reporter Hu Yanming

The Financial Workplace Illustrated Guide: Banking

"Mr. Liu, how did you think about the credit situation we communicated with last time?" After the message was sent, a red exclamation mark appeared in front of the dialog box, and Ren Tao had been removed from the friend list by the other party.

2024 is the third year that Ren Tao has become the bank's corporate account manager, and he said that it is still the norm to run into walls everywhere when talking about loan business.

Customer dinners and investment promotion activities have become Chen Shuo's "battlefield". As a senior relationship manager in the banking industry for more than 10 years, he hopes to find potential customers in these scenarios. April is a "small month of credit", in order to achieve the performance target in the second quarter, Chen Shuo still needs to work hard in May and June.

A senior executive of a joint-stock bank said that when the economic growth rate is slowing, the bank's operation is under great pressure, and the scale growth, profitability and asset quality will face challenges. Since 2007, the growth rate of bank assets has slowed from 14% to around 10%. All of this requires banks to focus more on sustainable growth. The same is true for bankers, who have bid farewell to the golden age of development and need to adapt to the new industry situation.

After two years in the industry, we have worked hard to expand new customers

In the past, bank jobs were seen as "golden jobs". Because of the relative stability of the job and the generous benefits, many college graduates aspire to work in a bank.

It is precisely because of this yearning that Ren Tao entered a city commercial bank in the north through layers of selection and served as the corporate account manager. Ren Tao is satisfied with the treatment, the basic salary of a month is 6,000 yuan - 8,000 yuan, and the "five insurances and one housing fund" are paid according to the highest standard.

After more than two years of work, Ren Tao has been maintaining several old corporate customers assigned by his bank, while also seeking to independently and successfully expand new corporate customers. He not only has to do credit business, but also pull deposits. At the beginning, Ren Tao also learned to do "Motuo" (expanding strange customers), and called them one by one according to the list of enterprises. Some companies were relatively smooth on the first phone call, but when they called again, they found that they were blocked.

Ren Tao said that a bank recruited 100 fresh graduates that year, and in a year there may be 50 left, and another year there may be 20 left. For the position of new college students who enter the bank, such as the position of relationship manager, many banks have now taken measures, usually giving a certain amount of protection or "protection period" in the first two years.

Even if the performance is not up to standard, the bank generally does not deduct wages, but it will inevitably bring psychological pressure to employees. Ren Tao believes that it is difficult for college graduates to get high-quality customers in a short period of time when they have just stepped out of school and entered the society, especially in the past two years.

There are also people who gradually gain recognition through slow accumulation. A colleague of Ren Tao specializes in high-tech enterprises in the jurisdiction. His colleagues are from science and engineering, usually focus on the progress of artificial intelligence, chips and other fields, and learn the latest industry trends, so when visiting customers, they will have a more detailed understanding of the customer's business, and can also give loans and financing suggestions for the development stage of the customer's company in a timely manner. Recently, he has caught up with the banking industry to increase financing support for scientific and technological innovation, and his colleagues have also performed relatively well.

Even though the expansion of new customers is not ideal, Ren Tao still kept the basic salary, and the second year was slightly higher than the first year. But the year-end bonus is less, 20,000 yuan less than the first year. The performance of the entire branch where he worked was also average, and he felt that the outlook was bleak and gradually retreated. Thinking that when he first entered the industry, Ren Tao was full of envy and yearning when he saw that some account managers could earn an annual salary of one million. He now knows that there are still people who can reach a million annual salaries, but it will certainly not be himself.

Look for a breakthrough in the "price war".

As soon as the "gunsmoke" of the assessment at the end of the first quarter dissipated, Chen Shuo began to rush to achieve the performance target for the second quarter. Compared with Ren Tao, who has just entered the industry, Chen Shuo has already "survived". Now, he has his own stable customers, but sometimes he is still under pressure in the face of new customers, bad and other indicators.

After communicating with the company, Chen Shuo felt that many companies are not short of money, or there is no need for expansion. In the past, companies may not have been afraid of market risks and would not lend to expand investment, but now, there is no need for investment in the absence of new orders.

Due to the gradual maturity of technology and the intensification of market competition due to the entry of peers, the operating profit margin of some of the enterprise customers in charge of Chen Shuo has declined. Chen Shuo believes that unless the company's product is unique, or the company develops a new product to improve product quality or pricing, the company's operating profit margin will be maintained for a period of time, which is a great test of the company's innovation ability.

In addition, in recent years, bank lending rates have continued to decline, and they are competing for high-quality customers. Chen Shuo said that the annualized interest rate of loans for local "specialized, special and new" enterprises can reach 2.7%-2.8%, far lower than the one-year loan prime rate (LPR) of 3.45%.

Since November 2023, Chen Shuo's bank has encouraged employees to stimulate domestic demand and "let go as much as possible" for loans. However, the local banks are particularly "volatile", and the capital cost of joint-stock banks is relatively high, and they do not have the capital advantage of large state-owned banks. Some companies will say to Chen Shuo, "Your (bank's) loan interest rate is higher than that of a certain bank, can it be lower, I will use your (bank's) loan." ”

Relying on the "strong foundation" of local economic development and the good foundation of the financial industry, Chen Shuo's branch has performed relatively well in the bank-wide ranking, and can obtain relatively low prices in loan pricing, but it is still not as good as the loan prices of large state-owned banks.

Chen Shuo said that the account manager is not only lending, but also needs to have a deep understanding of the local industrial structure, to be familiar with the industry in which the local enterprises are located, their competitiveness and ranking in the industry, and to have a keen "sense of smell" for the newly settled enterprises in the industrial park. Now, he focuses on expanding customers from the vicinity of the original customers, such as the upstream and downstream enterprises of the core customers, or the customers who have newly settled in the industrial park, and conducts daily visits to look for cooperation opportunities.

Chen Shuo believes that many business leaders are not from a financial background, they do not know much about finance, and in the process of communicating with many enterprises, they slowly cultivate the understanding of bank credit.

Chen Shuo's branch president often said in meetings that he should not "beg" others for loans, but should attract enterprises to cooperate by creating value and achieving "win-win". At this point, Chen Shuo is still learning.

In addition, local banking institutions will also have a "race" for the scale of their business. Which bank has a good business and a large scale will also attract excellent peers to jump ship. Chen Shuo said that a major local state-owned bank has done the best in corporate business, accounting for the largest market share. As a result, it's rare to hear of someone jumping out of this big state-owned bank, and their team of business people is particularly stable.

The head of a branch of a joint-stock bank told the Economic Observer that in recent years, business has been under great pressure and it is difficult to lend money. Local banking institutions are highly competitive, so they can only find a new way to grasp the needs of customers on the basis of ordinary loan products, and constantly carry out product innovation to hedge the adverse impact of price decline. For example, short-term loan products such as "electricity loan" have flexible borrowing and repayment, and the price is not high, and the annualized interest rate of the loan is less than 3%, which is also acceptable to the financial staff of the enterprise.

Banks are engaged in a "price war" on loans, but the growth of RMB loans is not as good as last year. From the macro data, data released by the People's Bank of China on April 12 showed that RMB loans increased by 9.46 trillion yuan in the first quarter of 2024, down from the 10.6 trillion yuan increase in the same period in 2023. In terms of structure, the increase in loans was mainly to public loans, with loans to enterprises (institutions) increasing by 7.77 trillion yuan in the first quarter, and loans to households increasing by 1.33 trillion yuan.

In addition, banks are facing the challenge of declining net interest margins, fragmentation of corporate operations, and increased asset quality risks.

With more than ten years of experience, Chen Shuo has long been accustomed to peaceful coexistence with assessment indicators and business pressure. His performance metrics have increased year by year, with 2023 being higher than in 2022 and this year being higher than in 2023. He said that on this road, you can only keep moving forward.

(At the request of the interviewee, Ren Tao and Chen Shuo are pseudonyms)