By Zhou Lin Since this year, fund industry has enjoyed a rapid development. As per statistical data, the total scale of the asset management business of 96 fund management companies surpassed 16 trillion yuan and the net asset scale of publicly offered funds reached 7 trillion yuan (4 trillion yuan at the corresponding period of 2014 and 3 trillion yuan throughout 2013) in the first half of this year. The volume of privately offered funds has increased with increasingly various products and obvious transformation tendency. The Director of PBC Financial Research Institute, Yao Yudong, said the other day that six transformations were expected in internet financial management industry, represented by internet fund: (1) transformation from sing product sales to platform financial management supermarkets; (2) transformation from "branch + PC" to "PC + mobile terminal"; (3) transformation from focusing on specific customers to all customers; (4) transformation from single product service to a basket of wealth management plan; (5) transformation from casting net sales to accurate sales; (6) transformation from physical economy to asset-based economy. At present, Chinese investors has allocated their most assets in real estate and other financial products, only a few families selected internet financial products; therefore, there is gigantic room for its future development. According to statistics, 72 platforms throughout the country have launched 69 money funds connecting with internet by the end of the second quarter of this year, with the total scale reaching 1463.8 billion yuan. What drives fund industry to "utilize network" originally? What do you think of the transformation after network utilization? Cooperating with "new partners" for mutual success One staff from a small publicly offered funds company admits that "the distribution channel of money fund has been relying on traditional commercial banks and other financing institutions with disadvantages of long fund purchase and redemption period, high expense and relatively high investment threshold". In 2013, monetary fund "Yu'ebao" was created jointly by Tianhong Fund and Alipay. For internet fund products, T+0 purchase and redemption mechanism is adopted. They can be purchased and redeemed through the third party payment platform with very low threshold and significant reduction of purchase and redemption expenses. The official statistical data provided by China Securities Regulatory Commission shows that by the end of June, 2015, the scale of five money market funds connecting to "Yu'ebao" and "Financer" has totaled 700 billion yuan, with the number of validated customers topping 80 million. With the sustainable development of "internet fund products", the "network utilization" method in fund industry has started to be diversified and the product category is expanded to various categories from one kind of money fund. The appearance of big data index fund is very representative. Since April this year, the CSI Jutao 100 cooperated by Alibaba Group and Bosera Fund, i100 index fund cooperated by Sina Finance and China Southern Fund and Baifa 100 index fund which has started purchase again have been "distributed simultaneously", pushing the big data index fund to the traditional financing product market. Besides, there is multi-industry cooperation of "network utilization" in fund industry. In June, online tourism platform "Qunar.com" launched Penghua Anyingbao Money Fund in cooperation with Ping An Bank; in July, Qihoo 360 concluded a strategic cooperation agreement of internet finance with Dacheng Fund to launch "360 internet + big data index" in cooperation with China Securities Index; at the end of July, JD.com firstly launched a privately offered FOF (Fund of Funds) product in the industry - Hongchou Assembling FOF and the object of the fund investment includes 4 privately offered products. The fund researcher from www.JNLC.com, He Fajie believes that index products and FOF products developed by fund companies and internet companies together are not only at shallow level cooperation aspects such as channel sales and new "chemical reaction" is under way in product design, risk control, big data application and other fields, which serves a model for other financial fields. Expanding financial management channels Except for finding "new partners", fund sales organizations also open fund sales stores on the third party e-commerce platform to sell funds to users of the third party e-commerce platform, which is also a significant change after "network utilization". Currently, on such 4 e-commerce platforms as Taobao.com, JD.com, Baidu.com and Wangfujing.net.cn, nearly 50 fund sales organizations publish over 1,500 fund products accumulatively. Therein, on-site Huabao Tianyi products topped 100 billion yuan in sales volume at the end of July, becoming the first on-site fund which has topped 100 billion yuan. The sound development of fund industry after "network utilization" depends on the gradual perfection of relevant systems. In order to the normative development of internet fund sales, in accordance with general requirements of "encouraging innovations, preventing risks, seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages and achieving sound development", China Securities Regulatory Commission and PBC started the emendation work of Temporary Provisions of Money Market Fund Management in due time and solicited public opinions on Supervision and Management Measures for Money Market Fund (Exposure Draft) and its supporting rules in May this year. In the exposure draft, specific demands were put forward for sales activities and disclosure of money market fund based on the new deeply integrative development tendency of money market fund and internet, for example, encouraging further innovative development of money funds on the premise that risks are under control; expanding the investment range of money market fund, supporting listed trading or transfer of money market fund shares, expanding the payment function of money market fund, etc. "There is still a gap between the current domestic internet financing market scale and the foreign market scale, but it has much room to grow in the future." He Dexu, the Secretary of the Party Committee from Financial Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that from now on, it is necessary to further strengthen our work in aspects of top-level design, product development and risk control in wealth management industry and create a favorable environment for developing internet funds and other new products.
The fund management sector in China has seen a rapid expansion this year , fueled by new online investments . Statistics show that 96 asset managers in the country have 16 trillion yuan ( $ 2.5 tn ) under management , with publicly offered investments up 75 % YoY and reaching 7 trillion yuan ( $ 1.1 billion ) . The Director of the PBC Financial Management fund believes that online investment is in its infancy and will be transformed by the ongoing development of new platforms .