Commentary

Chinese banks seem to have made meaningful progress in the resolution of problem loans. The aggregate amount of the announced debt-to-equity (D/E) swaps has reached 1 RMB trillion, to 19.5% of problem loans by the end of 2017. However, words are louder than actions as only 15.7% of the total announced D/E swaps have been executed. Banks clearly need to move faster in their cleanup and Chinese regulators are not only aware but also increasingly supportive. To this end, the big five banks have established their own asset management companies (AMCs) to help carry out debt-to- equity swaps. The way in which banks and their asset management companies will operate for the loan cleanup was clarified in a new guideline jointly published by regulators last January.

Banking is considered by most as the business of money. However, talk to a banking veteran and he or she will categorically instruct you that banking is a business of customers. This realisation is what ensured that customer centricity is an important value adopted by banks; and it has stood us in good stead. It then follows, that if we are in the business of customer, then our business is shaped by evolving changes in customer behaviour.

In just decades, digital advancement has enabled technology to shift from being a business enabler to being THE business.

In the banking sector, we take a broad view of digital—one that transcends new apps and the deployment of new and different channels. Moreover, we believe that digital is making it imperative for financial institutions to review and transform their organisational structures to ensure success and survival.

Banks need to narrow the distance with customers, to offer them an array of contact points, and to better understand their behavior and needs. New banking models start with establishing frictionless relationships with customers.

Robust economic growth and, especially, higher industrial prices have pushed up Chinese corporates’ profits since 2016. This comes as an upturn after a horrible 2015. Indirectly, this has also helped banks as it has increased companies’ cash flows to repay their large debt burden. However, this improvement in asset quality cannot mask other growing concerns in China’s banking sector.

Since the BCBS 239 principles on risk data aggregation and risk reporting were published by the Basel Committee in 2013, globally systemically important banks (GSIBs) have invested significant time and budget to reach compliance. However, four years on, the great majority are still not yet fully compliant, as updated by BCBS in March 2017.

The rapid advance of technology has created the impression that the entire banking industry will soon be digitised. Yet whilst much of traditional banking has gone the way of the abacus, we’ve learned something interesting along the way: people still want to speak to people. When my credit card was rejected recently, my first reaction was to call the bank. My app won’t tell me what the problem is, at least not today. And when it comes to a decision about my own money, that human touch becomes even more important and reassuring. Not everything will be online and clients don’t want it to be.

With all the noise surrounding distributed ledger technology (DLT), you’d expect participants in financial markets in Asia Pacific and elsewhere to be racing full-bore to get ready for it. But many are not. Presented almost daily with new claims about DLT’s disruptive and revolutionary potential, some executives have begun to wonder when they’ll actually begin to see some benefits from the technology. Financial market participants know DLT is coming. In Asia Pacific and around the world, about 80% of executives at financial institutions surveyed by Bain & Company believe the technology will be transformative, and a similar percentage expect their organisations to begin using it before 2020. Yet, at the same time, they’re hesitant to commit resources now. Among the market participants Bain surveyed, 38% said they’ve adopted a wait-and-see approach to DLT. What’s holding them back? First, uncertainty. It is hard to predict the exact timing or path of DLT. There are different types of DLT platforms (public or private, for example) and a wide spectrum of potential applications, from narrow cases such as proxy voting and Know Your Customer (KYC) vetting to broader uses such as post-trade clearing and settlement for equities. The way DLT evolves in a localised market like Australia, for example, is likely to be different from how it develops in a more connected market like Hong Kong. Much will depend on regulations that are still being formulated. Some regulators, such as the Monetary Authority of Singapore, actively support DLT innovation. Getting ready for DLT requires substantial investment, and it can involve working through tricky and expensive issues with legacy IT systems. Some firms, in an attempt to preserve near-term competitive positions, are trying to delay industry-wide adoption of DLT. Yet companies that are willing to be proactive and strategic about DLT, even in such a challenging climate, can gain an edge. DLT has the potential to broadly affect financial markets, but the most significant near-term impact is likely to be on settlement and clearing. While a trader can now execute a transaction at lightning speed, it can take as long as three days for that transaction to settle. With DLT, execution, clearing, and settlement could occur simultaneously, minimising cost and credit risks. Bain estimates that across global financial markets, annual expense and capital cost savings from DLT could amount to 1-3 basis points of total global assets under management, or about $15 billion to $35 billion. DLT can eventually also play a role in improving reference data, including benchmark interest rates like Libor, replacing existing survey processes that are opaque and subject to abuse. A DLT-based benchmark-setting mechanism, possibly administered by trading venues and industry-wide utilities, could directly capture data from spot transactions. Beyond trading, DLT has the potential to change the way firms interact with their clients in areas such as proxy voting, digital identity management and KYC. Broadridge, a global leader in proxy communication services, is developing a system to help make US proxy voting more efficient, secure, and transparent. As financial markets evolve with respect to DLT, companies will face game theory-type decisions. If they promote the early adoption of DLT across the ecosystem, they may benefit, but they may also end up disrupting their own economics and competitive positions. Yet if they’re slow to embrace DLT, they run the risk of being left behind. The most valuable DLT innovations can’t be developed in isolation; they require collaboration among participants, exchanges, and regulators. With so many participants involved across so many jurisdictions and asset classes, the adoption process will be messy and piecemeal — and this is the heart of the challenge. It may make more sense to share the costs as well as the benefits through industry utilities. One way or another, firms that want to reap the benefits of DLT will have to make significant changes to their processes, policies, and IT architecture. As part of their efforts to make their IT systems ready for digital, leading companies are taking some of the preparatory steps that will be necessary for DLT. Once a company has a perspective on how DLT is likely to evolve in the areas in which it does business, it can develop a systematic approach and a multi-year roadmap. Whether a company prospers or flounders in the DLT-dominated markets of the future will depend, in large measure, on strategic decisions it makes today. Once a firm defines a DLT-readiness posture and a high-level roadmap, its next step is to outline specific no-regrets initiatives. Many of the investments a firm makes, especially in IT, can bring benefits regardless of the pace or shape of DLT adoption. Those market participants that thrive with DLT will spend less energy on making excuses for inaction and more on developing a strategic and longer-term approach that’s consistent with who they are, what they do, and where they operate. They’ll focus on driving themselves and the entire industry toward a more efficient ecosystem. The winners in DLT will be those that push the pace of change, rather than resist it.   

Chinese fintech has caught the eyes of investors around the world with its explosive growth in the past half-decade. In our recent report Fintech in China: Hitting the Moving Target, we dissect this explosive growth, examine the imminent shift in the underlying value driver, and delineate the implications for market participants and investors. Since 2013, major segments of the fintech market — online peer-to-peer lending, online wealth management, digital insurance, and third-party payment — have doubled or even tripled every year. For example, the outstanding loan balance for online peer-to-peer lending platforms surged from RMB31 billion in January 2014 to RMB856 billion three years later. Such growth triggered massive injection of venture capital into China’s fintech. After achieving a staggering CAGR of 300% over the past three years, at $6.4 billion in 2016, China has overtaken the US as the global leader in fintech venture capital activities and represents 47% of total such investments, according to a KPMG report. Value driver shifting from “Fin” to “Tech” China has had a structurally imbalanced financial system with an underdeveloped infrastructure when compared to established markets. The structural shifts resulting from the Chinese government’s recent financial reform efforts, coupled with the skyrocketing internet and mobile penetration, has created an opportunity for fintech players to bridge the gaps in traditional financial services and serve the long tail of Chinese consumers by capitalising on their strong online presence and loose regulation. Nevertheless, the unregulated growth has led to several high-profile scandals. The Ezubao (E租宝) peer-to-peer lending platform made history as the biggest-ever financial fraud case in China after raising more than RMB1.5 billion in a Ponzi Scheme. Such incidents created growing concerns and prompted policymakers to incorporate fintech into the regulatory framework. As the window of regulatory arbitrage closes, future fintech leaders will differentiate themselves by pushing the frontiers of technological innovation and disrupting traditional financial services business models through three key technologies: big-data analytics, the Internet of things (IoT), and blockchain. Together, these technologies will create significant disruptions along value chains and bring about distinctive values for each of the four major areas of financial services: financing, investing, insurance, and transaction. Consider consumer finance as an example. The IoT created new, innovative sources of non-financial personal data that can be analysed using big-data analytics to aid the credit approval process, effectively expanding the “lendable” population. What does it mean for China’s fintech market participants and investors? The potential for growth in China’s fintech remains massive, and players of all sorts will attempt to penetrate the market. While there is no one-size-fits-all formula for success, we see five key factors that can increase its likelihood

When one door closes, another one opens up. As deleveraging moves up in the scale of objectives of the Chinese leadership, banks now face more restrictions from regulators. In any event, this is not the first time they find themselves in the regulatory whirlpool. From the usage of repo agreements to wealth management products (WMPs), and most recently negotiable certificate of deposits (NCDs), banks have been very creative in playing the cat and mouse game in front of evolving regulations.

The regulatory and business environments have become more volatile and unpredictable. Financial institutions have also faced a tsunami of new regulatory requirements which have driven up compliance costs, whilst increased capital and liquidity requirements have reduced returns. At the same time, fintech startups are threatening to disrupt traditional financial services business models.

Asian banks have seen an exponential growth in regulatory requirements in recent years, including a greater focus on consumer protection, market integrity and a demand for faster remediation of supervisory issues. This has added to the cost of operationalising compliance across the three lines of defence. For instance, firms are investing heavily on the business side to develop consistent methodologies, enhance data lineage, and implement risk identification. The industry’s approach to compliance though has been tactical and has amplified the need for end-to-end tools and platforms capable of automating and integrating front-to-back operations with compliance requirements that will ultimately drive accountability into the first line. As firms continue to make technological advancements that enhance customer experience and increase convenience, the next challenge for Asian banks is to look for practical and more effective ways to take advantage of “big data” — customer, risk, financial, operational, and more — that holds the potential to address many of these compliance concerns. However, managing this data efficiently, manipulating it effectively to serve a variety of purposes, ensuring sufficient quality to yield actionable results, and safeguarding it from cyberattacks remain elusive. Human biases and other limitations in managing big data’s multiple sources, volume, and complexity, whilst unavoidable, have only served to exacerbate these concerns. Although significant cost and effort has been expended, many firms still find themselves in non-compliance with regulatory obligations which has led to substantial fines and considerable reputational damage. From big data to smart data To address these challenges, Asian banks are exploring RegTech solutions to move away from the concept of big data towards one of “smart data.” Smart data uses machine learning and intelligent algorithms to make sense of big data’s overwhelming volume and complex patterns by structuring these patterns in a cost-effective way that is better able to identify current and emerging risks, predict compliance failures, and enhance business line coordination. Amidst significant business model disruption from increased competition and the rapid pivot toward growth objectives, it is critical that many of the manual processes firms have relied upon are automated to promote agility, scalability, and enhancements to customer and employee experiences. Increased competitive pressures from various market players, new entrants, and idiosyncratic customer demands for an improved delivery experience are also driving a need for agility in firms’ business processes and their ability to simultaneously achieve real-time compliance. To address this, many banks have either purchased or partnered with FinTech startups to support these key functions, assist in developing a lower-cost operating model, and provide technological innovations in financial product and service development. This trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future as more banks consider their options. As profitability continues to improve and technologies become more scalable, the industry will likely continue attracting additional FinTech competitors, and smaller institutions will likely consider following the lead started by larger firms by leveraging technology hubs designed to foster innovation in product development and provide agile platforms to support growth. Risk management ‘as a service’ Another area that organisations are exploring is the use of the cloud and the benefits of 'as a service' solutions. This is of particular assistance to Asian banks as it allows them to access best in class solutions in a “turnkey” format which has the attraction of reducing costs through economies of scale, accessing specific intellectual property, and providing regulatory compliance. It removes a significant amount of the headaches involved in implementing a risk or regulatory driven project (think IFRS9), and moves it from a Capex expense to an Opex one through subscription services. It also opens up access to a range of cognitive approaches to enhance analytics or automate processes through the additional computational power that can be accessed. Whilst there are some regulatory hurdles that may need to be crossed, the general tone from the industry is that the benefits provided by these platforms far outweigh these challenges. Overall, Asian banks are having to change their mindsets around how to meet these challenges and leverage emerging technologies to remediate current tactical approaches and solutions, automating these processes to reduce costs and allow staff to focus on value adding activities, as well as differentiate themselves from their peers from a pricing or shareholder point of view.  

Asian banks are focussed on finding growth under the current market conditions, which present opportunities in terms of new areas of business growth, as well as challenges in the form of competition from non-banks and evolving regulatory requirements.

Customer expectations for financial and banking services are rising at an ever faster rate. The approaches of banks are increasingly framed in black and white terms of good and bad. Banks found wanting or less than desirable are abandoned like sinking ships as customers take their transactions and businesses to more preferred institutions. Digital has made it simpler for customers to move their business to a different bank at the same time that it has made it possible for “undesirable” transaction business reviews to be disseminated nearly instantaneously — and as negative customer experiences can be shared in the blink of an eye, analog banks risk being left behind in the dust of the new digital era.

Industries across the board are undergoing structural change. This change extends beyond individual firms and spills across industrial sectors. Other industries that have been exposed to the tide of technology-driven structural changes have through the process harnessed technology to be reinvented as new industries befitting this evolution in industrial structure. The financial industry traditionally has been far from the vanguard of this change.