Behind these phenomena is the end of the credit card blowout era and the sudden emergence of private gold-consuming enterprises. For traditional banks, even if they have a deep foundation, they will inevitably be affected by the consumer money market.
For example, in the front-end marketing of credit cards, many traditional banks are different from the past, and their usual push mode has encountered embarrassment.
Customer test: the shopping mall is over-developed, and it is difficult to gain anything by sweeping the building and the street.
In July, during the severe employment season, Ding Ning of China Everbright Bank Credit Card Center had to leave his job. Only four months later, she joined China Everbright Bank with confidence and became a credit card salesman.
In Jilin City, Everbright Bank, where Ding Ning is located, mainly relies on cooperation with shopping malls with a large flow of people to launch promotional means such as card giving and credit card discount for on-site marketing.
Soon, the potential customers of the mall were gradually developed, and she realized the crisis. After months of trying to "sweep the building" and "sweep the street", it is difficult to maintain business volume. She finally realized the reality. "In the third-tier city of Jilin, the credit card market is close to saturation." Like many colleagues, she left the credit card center to make a living.
Chen Qin of Chengdu China Merchants Bank Credit Card Center told Liu Qing Club that China Merchants Bank is easier to develop credit card business than other banks because of its brand influence, preferential activities and user reputation. However, she also believes that the credit card market is almost saturated, and the amount of cards issued by online channels of China Merchants is also tightening. "The current performance mainly depends on the newly added university graduates and migrants in Chengdu."
"The cards that can be done offline are almost done", and the business is not good, which has become the heart disease of many offline credit card salesmen this year.
The performance pressure of the back-office operation department has doubled, and the staging business has become the only important indicator.
In fact, not only the front-end offline marketing team, but also the back-office operation departments of some bank credit card centers are under increasing pressure.
Yang Zhi is the backstage customer service of X Bank, a large joint-stock bank. He has a deep understanding of the changes in the credit card center of X Bank in recent years.
First of all, the number of employees is decreasing. Two years ago, the customer service department of X Bank 1.300 people, but now there are less than 900 people. Another puzzle of Yang Zhi is that the card center has stopped recruiting new people abnormally recently. "The atmosphere is very strange recently, and I feel that people have been driven away. Although we have worked overtime crazily this year, the daily busy rate index is above 90%. " Yang Zhi said that while communicating with Liu Qing Club, he sent away several colleagues who had left their jobs.
Yang Zhi also mentioned that the business requirements of X Bank Credit Card Center for employees have changed greatly recently.
For credit card customer service personnel like Yang Zhi and others, marketing staging has become a more important task than service. "Now we don't pay attention to service efficiency, nor do we require business proficiency. We only look at how much installment business you have done. " Yang Zhi said that X Bank has set up a number of indicators to strictly assess the quality of customer service. "Average call duration, repeat call rate, customer satisfaction, online occupancy rate. ................................................................................................................................
In addition, according to a loan officer of X Bank Credit Card Center, it is getting harder and harder to get customers now. "The trend of credit card acquisition is online application. We are already reducing the proportion of offline marketing and increasing the proportion of online customers, but WeChat, Taobao, JD.COM and other channels already have their own credit products, which is equivalent to directly dividing credit card users. "
Under the background of intensified competition in the credit card business and the rapid rise of private enterprises, like many banks, the cost pressure and profit pressure of X Bank's credit card center have been increasing, and the internal atmosphere has become somewhat impetuous.
Credit cards are difficult to transform, and eliminating the threat of money is just "ants shake elephants"?
"Before 2008, all major banks took the KPI of credit cards as the core and pursued the card quantity wholeheartedly. At that time, in order to get customers quickly, ICBC even prefabricated a large number of non-real-name credit cards with a quota of 10 yuan and distributed them to users, and then selected high-quality users through later information supplement and quota adjustment. " An executive who has been deeply involved in the traditional bank credit card center for more than ten years told the Liu Qing Club that it was not until 2008 that banks gradually changed from the impulsive era of card-centric to customer-centric.
For the changes in credit card business under the influence of current consumer finance, he believes that there are mainly the following points:
"First, the credit card business is developing purely online. For example, at present, the proportion of online customers of CITIC Bank exceeds 70%, and the proportion of online customers of China Merchants Bank reached 50% as early as two years ago. " In his view, in the future, whether it is customer acquisition, card issuance, risk control, anti-fraud, user activity management or even the management of the entire credit card life cycle will be completed online.
In fact, this also explains the phenomenon described at the beginning of the article. Under the background that the market tends to be saturated, the traditional means of obtaining customers are not accepted by young new users who rely on the Internet, and they also lose their advantages in cost and efficiency. Therefore, banks are more inclined to increase advertising investment in major traffic platforms, related forums, websites and other Internet channels than investing in encouraging offline sales staff.
"Second, the proportion of interest-bearing assets will be higher and higher." The strong demand of young people to consume in advance has cultivated fertile soil for the development of consumer finance and created huge profit space for interest-bearing assets. Even traditional banks have to vigorously promote cash loans, credit card installment and other businesses.
However, most people in the industry are optimistic about the future development of bank credit card business.
A banker in Beijing told the Liu Qing Club that there is still a gap between the average number of cards held and the average loan amount of families in China and developed countries, and he is very optimistic about credit cards.
"Credit cards are a stepping stone to credit reporting, and only credit cards can do pre-authorization business." Insiders of another licensed consumer financial institution said that the advantage of credit card lies in the wide range of payment channels, and it is easy to carry out card-free installment business in the future. It is difficult for mutual funds, consumer funds and other institutions to have a strong impact on credit cards within ten years, just like "ants shaking elephants".
"Although the impact on the credit card business is still small at present, it may become even greater in the future." The above executives have different views on this. "Pure online consumer financial products such as micro-loan, loan treasure, flower garden, JD.COM white strip and Zhaolian good loan may compete with banks for incremental users of credit cards in the future."
In addition, he also believes that measures to improve credit data in the future may change. With the further development of consumer finance, people who don't have credit information are widely developed by financial enterprises, and the era of "credit card as a stepping stone to credit information" may never return.
(The characters in the text are pseudonyms)
The competition is fierce! Huarong and Yin Hang, which opened in the same period, announced their first-half results. One turned losses into profits, and the other still lost money.