This article is from the WeChat public account: a book (ID: yibencaijing) , author: zero and MiG, the original title: “do electricity supplier, games, insurance or even engage in feng shui, financial technology transformation of the war has just begun ……”
The entire fintech industry is being hit hard.
Everyone realizes from the pain that the road ahead is blocked, and there are no more loopholes, and it must be transformed.
The tide of industry transformation has arrived.
There are platforms trying to do e-commerce, but the conversion rate is not high;
There are platforms that try to make games, and the conversion rate is good, but the game is very close to gambling and “stopped by relevant departments”;
There are platforms that try to divert wealth from banks, trusts, and third parties. The conversion rate is not high and there is no right to speak.
And the experiment on insurance has just begun. Some practitioners even shouted the slogan of “Transforming from loan assistance to insurance assistance.” Can this path of transformation with high expectations be followed?
One, e-commerce test water
Fintech’s transformation wars will begin one after another in 2019.
Some organizations have watched “the general trend has gone”, and they have begun their transformation as early as the beginning of the year; while some institutions have always had the fluke and wait-and-see attitude.
Some platforms that have a large number of users, because of the cessation of loans and sales of wealth management products, user activity continues to decline, facing “zombie.”
In order to reactivate users, each platform has tried its best.
Currently, the platform for transforming e-commerceAccounted for the vast majority.
“In the first half of 2018, we stopped lending and started to discuss the direction of transformation.” Zhang Yu, an executive of a cash loan platform, revealed that they have 20 million users on the platform, and the first step to try is e-commerce.
They built a comprehensive e-commerce platform to sell daily necessities and get goods directly from factories and first-tier channel vendors.
Because the loan users pay more attention to cost-effectiveness, and the consumption level is not high, more than 35% of the products on their platform are 19.9 yuan free shipping.
Zhang Yu revealed that it took them 30 million to build an e-commerce platform, “not including all kinds of hidden costs.”
Employers of the e-commerce model soon discovered that such conversions are not high, and the borrowing and shopping scenarios are a bit out of place.
“Most of the loan crowds are people who worry about money, and their desire to shop is not strong.” Zhang Yu said.
A lending super transformation directly transformed into an e-commerce company, and its internal staff revealed that “the conversion rate is almost zero.”
There are also some platforms that don’t want to be that heavy, but just guide the e-commerce.
As a result, the conversion rate is too low, and they are defeated one by one.
Another head platform has also tried e-commerce. Its person in charge, Lu Xiangwen, believes that the genes of financial platforms and e-commerce platforms do not match.
“The core competitiveness of e-commerce is the ability of the supply chain and the ability to operate, which are not available in financial platforms.” Lu Xiangwen said.
Because the operation ability of their team can’t keep up, many users have experienced problems such as slow logistics and untimely handling of product problems after purchasing goods.
Zhang Yu saw that the conversion rate was not good, so she tried to abandon her original customer base and re-acquire customers.
“But being squeezed by domestic giants, the e-commerce space is already very small, and the cost of acquiring customers is as high as 80 to 120 yuan.” Zhang Yu admitted.
“We lost 60 to 70 million yuan in 10 months.” Zhang Yu believes that financial platforms do not have core values and core products as e-commerce, and can only be reduced to escorts.
Lu Xiangwen said that at present, there is no particularly successful case in the transformation of fintech to e-commerce. “Everyone is still exploring.”
II. Financial Diversion
P2P platforms have basically stopped adding new wealth management products due to regulatory requirements.
Some platforms have begun to save the country, trying to direct users to banks, trusts and third-party wealth management companies.
At present, there are three main ways of drainage:
Place products from other platforms directly on the page; telemarketing; leave a customer service WeChat to let customers add WeChat to communicate in depth.
Those attempts will basically face three problems:
First, user trust is low and conversion rates are low.
Hu Haozhe, a platform product director, said that the first thing they tried was to guide users to third-party wealth companies.
“Most users say that you should refund the money on this platform first, and then come to Huyou to buy other products.” Hu Haozhe said.
At present, most P2P users ’money on the platform has not yet been refunded.” In the current industry background, users have low trust in the platform and some people are still somewhat hostile to the platform. “
“Our conversion rate is no higher than 10%,” said Hu Haozhe.
Conversion rates are not high, and commissions and commissions are not up.
In order to increase trust, Hu Haozhe tried to cut some of the products of formal financial platforms.
For example, banks and trusts.
“Most banks refuse to cooperate and are worried about being affected by various thunderstorms. Even the financial institutions willing to cooperate, the conditions for opening are particularly harsh.” Hu Haozhe recalled that one bank stated that it would not pay commissions and lead it. A transaction user only gives 200 yuan.
Hu Haozhe feels that such unequal cooperation is meaningless.
Some large platforms that have the right to speak are unhappy when working with traditional financial institutions.
A leading fintech company is working with trusts to direct some high net worth clients to trust platforms.
But the Trust ’s APP has various stutters and problems, and the design is not user-friendly. “A bunch of customers come to talk, and there is no user experience at all.”
“The most important thing is that the trust review process is very long. You need to fill out an appointment purchase order and also perform a video review. Many big customers find it troublesome and are too lazy to buy.”Li claims that the retention rate is about 20%, and the investment amount is much lower than before.
At present, P2P is not very smooth for traditional financial diversion, with low conversion rate, poor user experience, and low profit.
Three, from loan assistance to insurance assistance
After all, financial products fall into three main categories: lending, wealth management, and insurance.
“Now the door to lending and wealth management is blocked, and everyone is turning to insurance.” Many founders of fintech platforms have noticed that the Internet insurance market is exploding.
In the past three years, many Internet insurance models have been falsified, but some models have run through and have started to become profitable.
Is there a chance for FinTech to transition to insurance?
“The opportunities are very large. The online demand of China’s finance is a process of slowly awakening. It started with financial management, then borrowing, and now it is insurance.” Xu An, the founder of a fintech platform, has studied the market It was later discovered that the insurance market was in a period of huge rising dividends.
After testing several sets of data, Xu An found that it is easier for wealth management users to switch to insurance than for borrowers.
“The borrowers themselves are short of money, and they can’t solve their food and clothing needs. What about insurance demand?” Xu An found that users with borrowing rates exceeding 24% had extremely low insurance conversion rates.
So, is it completely unsuitable for insurance users to sell loans?
Xu An believes that the answer is “not necessarily.”
The borrowing users are younger, and the post-90s generation is the main force, and now the Internet insurance purchasers are also the majority.
“OneSome young users who are accustomed to buying goods in installments and have advanced consumption habits are actually coincident with insurance purchasers. They need to be washed out of the pool of borrowers. “Xu An believes that borrowers need to choose.
Wealth management users and insurance users have a natural match.
Wealth management users are also divided into several layers.
For high net worth users, annuity insurance is a sought-after item.
“Now many financial products are thunderous, and the trust of financial users in the financial product itself is also decreasing. At this time, they are recommended to guarantee insurance and annuity products with guaranteed interest.
For some wealth management users with lower investment amounts, it is more suitable to promote comprehensive insurance products such as health insurance.
“These users have more money in their homes, and there is a great demand for insurance products that protect families and individuals,” said Xu An.
At the same time, these wealth management users have had experience in purchasing financial products online, so their acceptance of insurance purchases online is also very high.
“The data of our family has come out, and the effect is very good. Now I am trying to increase the conversion rate and the unit price.” Xu An said.
“Of course, insurance products are different from wealth management and lending products. This is an area where slow work and careful work can’t make fast money.” Xu An believes that platforms that have made too much fast money before may not be able to see On this field.
But because he ca n’t make quick money, and the insurance is tightly regulated, Xu An feels worthy of layout.
Here, the track is already planned, and no one can sneak in or skimp or disrupt the industry. “On this track, you can run for a long time.”
Fourth, the sword goes sideways
At present, in addition to the aforementioned transformation attempts, opportunities and possibilities also exist in the areas of to B, going abroad, virtual credit cards, supply chain finance, and small and micro enterprise loans.
But there are still some platforms that are not ready to follow the regular path. The sword goes to the side and tries to wipe the ball.
“Loan users will not buy goods, but this group of users has a strong interest in games.”Xu Wenkang, product manager of the Jindai platform, said that this transformation is more compatible with user portraits.
So, there are several self-developed mini games on their platform, such as chess and card games, fishing.
“The way we activate the user is to send him a text message, such as telling him to send him 10,000 game coins.” Xu Wenkang said, “The response rate can reach 10%, and everyone is interested in free stuff.”
Games do make money, too. “A lot of users continue to recharge and play games.”
However, it was only 3 months after the project went online that the project was warned to stop.
“Say we are involved in gambling.” Xu Wenkang said that the game can indeed activate users well, but the boundaries are not easy to grasp. After half a year of transformation, it has been zero.
At present, all the platforms that try games encounter a more awkward question: if you want to make money, you may cross the border; if you do n’t make money, what is the significance of doing this?
In addition to the game, there are a small number of players who have tried to launch Feng Shui, Fortune Telling, or Constellation.
“To be honest, these projects are very profitable.” The product owner of a platform revealed that they sold a lot of products that paid for consulting “Fengshui” and “the daily order of Fengshui masters was full.”
They even started to sell “Transport Jewelry”, a transfer bead with a price of 399 yuan, which has sold more than 400 orders.
“But these products are a bit of a rubbish ball and belong to feudal superstitions.” The person in charge of the product said that they will gradually turn to constellations and tarot cards. .
Platforms have a thorough look at these sideballs: “It’s just to make another quick money, not a long-term solution.”
“The biggest problem in the transition right now is not the direction of the transition, but the mentality of the transition.” Xu An said that he talked with people on many platforms, and most of them were still immersed in the thrill of making quick money and couldn’t help themselves.
They don’t like the painful and tired patterns.
“Finance should be a low-profit industry, not a profitable business.” Xu An believes that in the future, fintech is unlikely to make fast money again. If it does not reverse its mindset, it will be completely out.
At its peak, there were more than 3,000 P2P platforms in the market and thousands of consumer financial platforms.
The real transformation war has not yet arrived.
“Everyone is still in the throes, and they have not slowed down.” Xu An believes that the real tide of transformation will come early next year.
In this wave of shuffling, the only way to survive is to reverse your mindset and move towards compliance.
* Respondents in the text are aliases.
This article is from the WeChat public account: a book (ID: yibencaijing) , author: zero and MiG