Before a while, P2P appeared large-scale group explosion thunder, industry reshuffle intensified. The businesses involved in these explosive platforms, in addition to small lending transactions, the auto financial market is also a major focus of their efforts.
From the second half of 2015 to the first half of 2016, at least 1,070 P2P platforms were involved in auto loan business, according to the white Paper on Internet Auto Finance. This means that about half of the platforms in the online loan industry enter the auto finance market. According to the 2017 Inventory of The Development Status and Trend of Internet Auto Finance produced by Pencil Road Research Institute, the proportion of Internet auto finance platform in the auto consumer finance market has reached about 10%.
Nowadays, the search keyword of the automobile industry cannot leave two things, one is new energy, the other is shared car. Through the phenomenon to see the essence, although there are a variety of new forms of business, a variety of enterprises to come into the mess, looking at the automotive industry is a huge profit cake. And this year, the industry has been rocked by policy.
According to the Tariff Commission of The State Council, starting From July 1 this year, import tariffs for complete vehicles will be reduced from 25 percent and 20 percent to 15 percent, while import tariffs for auto parts will be reduced from 8 percent, 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent and 25 percent to 6 percent. After the tariff reduction, Mercedes, BMW, Audi and other imported high-end brands have announced simultaneous price cuts of their imported cars. The information brought by the Internet is highly symmetrical and transparent, which further compresses the profits of new cars. As a result, the aftermarket, including auto finance, is drawing attention.
Domestic auto finance outbreak encountered resistance
As we all know, the Internet has brought disruptive changes to many traditional industries, and the financial industry is no exception. But obviously, the potential of the domestic auto financial market has not erupted.
Capital is pouring in from post-market services such as second-hand car trading, door-to-door car washing, car maintenance and repair, and auto finance. As one of the most valuable and potential links in the industrial chain, the total domestic scale of auto finance in 2017 has reached 1,162.3 billion yuan. Whale accurate data show that auto finance accounts for the highest proportion in the profit structure of the industrial chain of mature auto markets in developed countries, up to 24%. However, in the profit structure of the industry chain of China’s auto market, the profit of the whole automotive aftermarket accounts for only 12%, which shows the potential of China’s auto finance penetration rate to continue to increase. But that potential has been suppressed.
First, the position of traditional financial institutions is hard to shake, and new forces cannot be released. The flexibility and convenience of Internet innovative scientific and technological achievements have been greatly improved, and the penetration of Internet financial products will be deepened with the change of The Times, but the fact is not so.
As we know, it is precisely because of its great development potential that the auto finance market attracts many transformed P2P platforms. However, today’s Internet auto finance is still an auxiliary means of traditional financial institutions. Commercial banks now account for 50 percent of auto finance, auto consumer finance companies for 26 percent and finance leasing companies for 10 percent, according to the Pencil Path report. The strong intervention of P2P failed to bring subversion, and the market is still dominated by commercial banks, auto finance companies and auto manufacturer finance companies.
This is because the safety of Internet financial products is not as good as that of traditional auto financial institutions, and their risk control ability is not satisfactory on the basis of the imperfect credit investigation system. On the one hand, this is disadvantageous to financial platforms. Once, the Mutual Gold platform involved in the auto loan field suffered as high as 70% loan delinquency rate, and the platform was unable to restrain consumers. On the other hand, as far as consumers are concerned, the current situation of enterprises running away and failing to take responsibility also makes them not trusted enough by the market, which makes people’s choice more conservative. As a result, traditional auto financing products remain popular.
Second, the market dividend has spawned a black industry chain, and many chaos has become the main reason to hinder the outbreak of the domestic auto financial market.
Although there are Internet tools, the industrial chain of auto finance operation is too long, many links are not transparent, the existence of intermediaries and dealers make new cars change hands constantly, and consumers have few reliable purchase channels. Moreover, the phenomenon of car fraud and loan fraud is no lack of a few, all kinds of dazzling car loan products in the market, consumers in a weak position of information transparency is not high, it is easy to be deceived. Generally speaking, the chaos in the market is hindering the development of Internet auto finance.
If these vertical Internet auto finance platforms are too weak to succeed, then the auto websites trying to open the auto market through the Internet should be more powerful. However, Autohome, the leading one-stop car service website, is also slowly moving forward in the auto finance market.
The car website of surface scenery, also eat car finance hard this fat meat
Autohome as the world’s most visited car website, its users reach the ability of course is beyond doubt. But how much of the auto finance market can Autohome, with its legions of potential consumers, swallow?
In the eyes of car lovers, Autohome is a very important search channel, and also a social forum with rich content and information, which provides users with sufficient experience and content support for the early, middle and later stages of car purchase. It even carries dealers from all over the country to help users realize car purchase transactions and provide rich auto financial products.
However, such a seemingly very smooth and popular channel, but also has a hidden. Autohome’s financial business is facing resistance from several quarters.
First, traffic conversion rate is low. Many users go to autohome, E-Car and other vertical media to learn about information. However, the length of the time line from learning about relevant information, to making a purchase decision, and to choosing financial products during the purchase process is actually detrimental to the conversion of traffic. More importantly, many car buyers are not in the habit of consuming media, so the low traffic conversion rate is the first difficulty for AutoHome finance to develop its business.
Second, it is the necessary relationship between purchasing channel and financial product selection behavior. It can be said that, to a large extent, users’ car purchasing channels can directly determine their choice of financial product channels. According to the 2017 China Auto Consumption Trend Survey report jointly launched by the 21st Century Business Herald, China Auto Finance Lab and Nielsen, 4S shops are still the most popular vehicle purchase channel, accounting for 70%, while e-commerce platforms accounted for 10.2%. Obviously, the main channel for users to buy cars is still more widely distributed and more sufficient 4S shops. Naturally, the purchase rate of financial products in 4S stores is higher.
Third, the dispersed energy of the platform is unable to deepen the financial business. At present, Autohome has been able to provide consumers with one-stop services for all aspects of car selection, car purchase, car use, car exchange and so on. The business scope is very wide, and even involved in second-hand car trading, auto finance and other automotive aftermarket services. The advantage of this is that consumers like it, and the complete service can save users a lot of time. However, at the same time, the diversification of multiple fields will also lead to the dispersion of platform energy, capital and other aspects, especially with the expansion of business volume, each business has to carry out independently, how to effectively integrate resources is also a challenge for Autohome.
In general, Autohome is a huge ecosystem of cars, and its finance business will be left out in the cold as consumers continue to prefer more traditional, reliable channels for big things like car purchases.
Seize the auto financial market: users in front, data after
Finance is a high-risk industry, and risk control is the foundation of financial business. The large-scale explosion of P2P thunder, with high overdue rate fully confirmed the risk of the market. It is no exaggeration to say that non-giants cannot do finance, and only a solid and perfect credit data system can support finance. The same is true of auto finance.
For Autohome, its user base is well known in the industry, but more efforts are needed to launch financial services.
On the one hand, Autohome’s financial operations are based on a thorough understanding of the market.
In fact, auto home’s financial business is to have a certain risk control strength. On June 25, 2016, the settlement of Autohome shares was completed. Ping An of China held 47.4% of autohome shares and became the largest shareholder of Autohome. By the end of February 2017, Ping An increased its stake in Autohome to 53.9%. Ping An is a strong integrated financial services group in its own right, but that strength has not been fully exploited at Autohome.
In September 2014, Autohome officially launched its auto finance business, which became a major strategic move following the auto e-commerce business and enabled autohome to achieve a complete industrial chain of car purchase service. However, the risk control strength is not enough. On the basis of such strong risk control, Autohome also needs to provide targeted services for the audience and create financial products that better understand automobile consumers, so as to get out of its own way.
On the other hand, make full use of flow, data and other resource advantages, establish their own credit database.
In 2007, Ping An started the official direct selling of insurance in China with telephone and auto insurance as the breakthrough point. The financial services of Ping An And Autohome, which have been deeply engaged in the insurance field, have not been well integrated. In fact, Autohome can make full use of its huge search traffic entrance advantage to paint the consumer habits of the audience, and then make use of ping An’s data resources advantage to create a credit database dedicated to its own auto consumers.
Of course, this is inseparable from the support of big data, cloud computing and other emerging technologies. Polishing technology to establish their own credit database, not only can help enterprises gradually establish a good reputation, become a more reliable, trusted platform; At the same time, the corporate image can also be virtually changed. From the user’s point of view, Autohome is still a wide range of loose content information website, and with the establishment of a reliable automobile service platform image, autohome can complete the real transformation.
Generally speaking, the Internet financial platform failed to detonate the auto finance market, because the market trust is not high enough. Autohome, as the automobile website with the largest user visit volume in the world, is expected to convert the huge traffic. However, first, it needs to cultivate users’ consumption habits on the website and guide search users to transform into the service objects of auto finance. Second, we need to understand the market demand and establish a reliable image that can be trusted. That makes it easy for Autohome to take the lead in gobbling up financial markets on behalf of Internet firms.
Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110