Compared to the success stories of Internet finance products based on online consumer money management and specific project funding, etc., the gold market may be the next sizeable growth market for Internet finance. Having said that, you may have doubts that the gold market does not seem to have much relevance to Internet finance, but I would say that the real source of innovation and service of Internet finance is based on the product model of the traditional financial market, this kind of service type innovation does not mean that it can go beyond the essence of finance, the closer the product is to finance, the more likely it is to be made into an Internet financial product, and gold is one of the most promising Gold is one of the most promising industries.

For example, the balance, P2P loans, third-party payments, etc., are "grabbing" part of the bank's business, and crowdfunding, especially equity crowdfunding, is actually diverting funds from the venture capital market. This shows that Internet finance is still based on financial services, which means that the future space of Internet financial products ultimately depends on whether the Internet financial products have sufficient status and influence in the financial market. Most directly, to create an Internet financial product and make it quickly adapt to the market, you have to think about the banking business, what else can be deeply "replaced" or "divided" by Internet finance.

In the 2014 ICBC (601398, bar) annual report, more than 30 times mentioned "precious metals", more than 10 times mentioned "gold". The annual report said, ICBC precious metals business in the market oscillation downward environment, by actively adjusting the business structure, precious metals financing and financing of goods and other new business scale growth is still more than 50%; ICBC alone, the annual precious metals business transaction volume of 1.03 trillion yuan, the Shanghai Gold Exchange clearing volume of 343.7 billion yuan. Although the annual report did not announce in detail about the profit data of the gold business, but which continuously mentioned the personal finance business, as well as the income of the public finance business, whose growth mainly relies on the contribution of the sale of financial products and precious metals business; other business income increased by 9.144 billion yuan, mainly driven by the increase in premium income, operating leasing and precious metal leasing income. The Internet financial market is fully capable of taking a share in the gold business of banks in full swing, because there is no law that clearly states that gold business can only be done by banks.

The importance of the banks to the gold-based precious metals business, the Internet financial market may not have deep contact or feel, but the ordinary people (603883, stock bar) is very experienced, almost every bank business outlets will have "gold display" and all kinds of promotional materials; most of the bank net banking, can be The majority of the bank internet banking can see a variety of innovative business related to gold. But behind the banks' efforts to promote gold business, so far it does not meet the people's many personalized needs. Especially in recent years, with the soaring sales data of gold jewelry and other markets (the average consumption growth rate of gold jewelry in the past five years is over 15%, and the sales of China's gold jewelry market last year exceeded 360 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 80% of China's total retail jewelry), the entire gold entity industry has a more obvious demand for gold leasing, lending, repurchase, interest-bearing, etc. This kind of business, due to the very high stock, has not been affected by the The weak gold price and the decline of investment demand, but the banks have almost monopolized all the financial business derived from the gold market (almost no competitors). In addition to the growing number of innovative gold financial services, the gold jewelry and investment demand markets have had to transform to the "Internet".

Due to the high value of gold jewelry, the development of the online market was relatively slow before, and up to now, the proportion of gold jewelry online sales was less than 3% of the overall sales. But since 2013, with the emergence of gold jewelry vertical online stores, consumers began to accept the gold jewelry online shopping mode. 2013 in the entire Tmall gold jewelry network consumption, gold jewelry, whether from the sales amount or consumption, are much higher than diamonds, precious stones, jade, platinum jewelry, etc., the annual sales of gold jewelry through Tmall amounted to more than 1 billion yuan (accounting for The annual sales amount of gold jewelry through Tmall exceeded 1 billion yuan (accounting for 56% of the entire Tmall jewelry sales), and the number of consumer trips exceeded 700,000 (accounting for 55% of the entire Tmall jewelry consumer trips), with an average customer unit of over 1,000 yuan. Beijing Cai Bai Gold first tried out online sales in 2014 and sold 6 million yuan on the day of "Double 11" alone.

Internet financial products based on gold industry services continue to emerge

The liquidity of gold determines its special commodity status, gold itself is "money", if you can combine the gold business with Internet finance, its development space and business expansion speed will have unexpected results. It is also the last two years that China's gold consumption and investment market has entered the scale of development, and many Internet financial products based on gold industry services have started to emerge in the market. Most of the founders or managers of these products are from traditional gold enterprises, and they know the space and service "blind spot" behind them. The most typical gold Internet financial products include "gold wallet", "deposit gold treasure", "gold housekeeper", "gold life treasure", etc. They are not only gradually opening all kinds of ports in the gold industry, but also include the concept of investment and finance in Internet finance.

The "gold wallet" A round has received nearly ten million dollars of investment from Softbank, the number of users has exceeded 50,000, which is based on the flow of physical gold, and offline industry integration, gold leasing, lending, etc. "bottom of the box gold" business is currently 7 days annualized rate of return of 6.8% (much higher than the market The 7-day annualized yield is 6.8% (much higher than the yield of similar money funds such as "Balance"), and it has maintained such a yield since its listing. "In addition to the offline business based on the offline flow of physical gold such as "deposit gold to generate interest", "Gold Butler" has also In order to meet the demand of Chinese moms for gold preservation, it also introduces an insurance system for falling gold prices. Although many of these innovative products are still in the trial stage, it is enough to see that the whole market has a very clear understanding and pursuit of gold-based Internet finance, and the involvement of big capital is precisely because it has started to pay attention to the huge space of the gold market.

"Deposit Money" is a gold access service jointly created by Alipay, a subsidiary of Ant Financial Services, and Boshi Fund, and buying Deposit Money means buying Class I shares of Boshi Gold Fund (ETF), which is directly sold by Boshi Fund. "GoldSure is similar to the gold industry's "BalancePay", with investment based on a combination of gold T+D and a money fund (20% of the funds are leveraged for gold investment, 80% for money fund), and the daily interest of the money fund is then converted into gold grams and deposited into the GoldSure account. These two products are mainly based on gold's financial professional investment properties, innovative in general, easier to risk control, but also relatively small competitive, belong to the middle of the road gold Internet financial products.

Internet finance based on gold market is still in its initial stage, besides traditional gold store brands start to do online sales and pre-sale interest-bearing products, "gold wallet", "gold housekeeping" and other pure Internet finance models also gradually start to occupy the market. What we can see now is that the traditional gold stores do online sales in a cheaper way, and the effect is also obvious for the time being, but in the long run the user experience and value-added services are not good, and without better innovation and more well-known brands to support, the pressure will be very big in the future. On the one hand, it needs huge cost investment and offline integration, on the other hand, it needs more professional promotion, after all, the gold After all, the "consumption" of gold is rational consumption, not passionate consumption, in most cases the user has to consider the "preservation of value", is a typical financial services category, but its advantages also from the "Internet" Three words, which makes the future full of infinite possibilities.

Another thing to pay attention to is a new model similar to the Gome Group, which is a cross-border enterprise to the gold market. Especially after the success of Chow Tai Fook, Lao Fengxiang (600612, stock bar) and other companies such as "Golden One Culture (002721, stock bar)" and other small gold products sales enterprises listed in the capital market since the continued scale of financing, Gomez, as a company with more transformation potential and capital motivation, to "multilateral gold capital" continued to invest heavily in the market. Perhaps the new concept and new highlight of Gome Group in the future is "multilateral gold capital".

Activate China's private gold reserves of over 5000 tons

How to do the Internet finance of gold, I will give just one example. At present, gold processing enterprises lease gold from banks at an average annual interest rate of more than 15% (the banks can't lose money), but there are more than 5,000 tons of retail gold reserves in the Chinese market that are "idle", if there are institutions that can pool this "loose gold" If an institution can pool this "loose gold" and lease it to some enterprises in the gold industry chain at 10% interest rate, the retail investors who hold gold for a long time can get at least close to 10% interest rate for lending, while the gold-using enterprises can get raw gold at a lower cost. According to the current Chinese gold