Ant Financial has become Ant-Man: Already a giant with no timetable for listing

Recently, at Ant Financial's Sharing Day, Ant Financial CEO Peng Lei led a group of senior executives to share with the media the business progress and development strategy of Ant Financial over the past year. Among the 13 senior executives who appeared, there were heads of Ant Financial's payment and wealth management, insurance, MYbank, credit reporting, and internationalization businesses.

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Peng Lei said that Ant Financial was established exactly one year ago. Judging from the business development in the past year, it has completed the layout in the fields of banking, insurance, credit reporting, etc., and has already reached a huge scale. The outside world may think that the appetite of small ants is big, but in fact, ants will not become elephants. Ant Financial has always insisted on serving small and micro enterprises and entrepreneurs, and this direction will not change.

Peng Lei explained the logic of Ant Financial's business layout. She said that Ant Financial's layout over the past year has always been closely centered around the main theme of "people and money." In terms of investment logic, Ant Financial has also been committed to strategic investment rather than financial investment, aiming to build its own ecosystem, and the agreement it just reached with 36Kr is for this purpose.

As Ant Financial has grown, rumors of its listing have often circulated. Ant Financial President Jing Xiandong has once again clearly denied the rumors. He said that Ant Financial currently has no listing or financing plans, no listing timetable, and no pre-set schedule for listing on the A-share or Hong Kong stock markets.

The little ant can't hide the elephant's body

At the Sharing Day, Ant Financial President Jing Xiandong made it clear that Ant Financial will not become an elephant. During the media Q&A session, Peng Lei also repeatedly emphasized that Ant Financial does not have a big appetite. However, this cannot hide the fact that Ant Financial has become an elephant after a year of development.

At present, Ant Financial is valued at US$50 billion and has become a unicorn in the domestic financial sector. Its business has covered all aspects of the financial sector and has also extended offline. At the same time, the internationalization of related businesses such as Alipay has also progressed smoothly. If its business segments are carefully sorted out, the evolution of a financial ecosystem has already emerged.

In the field of basic payment, as of 2015, Alipay, a subsidiary of Ant Financial, has maintained cooperation with more than 200 banks.

In terms of financial management, Ant has Yu'ebao, Zhaocaibao and Ant Jubao to meet financial management needs at all levels.

In terms of loans, Ant Financial uses MyBank as its main body to provide financing and other financial services to small and micro enterprises.

In the financing field, through the Zhaocaibao platform + insurance model, 20 property and casualty insurance companies have joined the booster plan and have provided guarantee services for a total of 150 billion yuan in credit loans.

In the insurance field, in addition to providing an insurance product sales platform, ZhongAn Insurance, of which Ant Financial is the single largest shareholder, is the first company to obtain an Internet insurance license. Ant Financial then acquired a controlling stake in Cathay Property & Casualty Insurance for RMB 1.2 billion, further expanding its territory in the insurance field.

In addition, in the credit reporting business sector, Sesame Credit, a subsidiary of Ant Financial, has begun to expand into application scenarios in the life and financial fields.

In addition to the intensive layout of the domestic financial industry, Ant Financial's international business is also gradually expanding. In terms of international business layout, Alipay's overseas payment scenarios are diversifying and overseas mergers and acquisitions are happening from time to time.

Recently, Ant Financial launched financial cloud services, opening up the cloud computing capabilities and technical components accumulated over the years to financial institutions, which means that Ant Financial has begun to enter the financial IT field.

There is still no timetable for listing

Although Ant Financial's ecosystem is gradually improving, there are still uncertainties in its development. First of all, Ant Financial faces regulatory risks in its business. Take Alipay, for example. As Ant Financial's signature product, it has recently been under pressure. The central bank's regulatory policy on online third-party payments has been delayed, and the draft opinions that have been issued have also had a significant adverse impact on Alipay and other platforms. At the same time, MYbank has been in business for half a year, but its innovative business has not yet been launched and is also waiting for the regulator to approve it.

In fact, Ant Financial has always embraced regulation. President Jing Xiandong said at the Sharing Day: "The development of new finance cannot be separated from regulation. Ant Financial is committed to putting new financial innovation under transparent and effective supervision." "Internet finance is not regulatory arbitrage, nor will it be in a regulatory vacuum."

To this end, Ant Financial launched a "transparent supervision project for reserve funds" based on big data at the meeting. The platform is open to regulatory authorities 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This means that the People's Bank of China can monitor the operation of Alipay reserve funds and the implementation of reserve fund management regulations online in real time in the office.

In fact, the industry has always had doubts about Ant Financial's "platform and self-operation" in its business layout. Specifically, on the one hand, Ant Financial cooperates with traditional financial institutions to access payment, wealth management and other businesses, and even launches financial cloud to help traditional financial institutions transform into Internet + finance. On the other hand, Ant Financial has established its own MyBank and other financial services, and has personally laid out specific financial businesses.

This positioning of being both a referee and an athlete makes some industry insiders uneasy. In this regard, Peng Lei admitted that this controversy has been going on since the establishment of Ant Financial. She believes that self-operation and platform operation are not mutually exclusive. Whether cooperating with peers or operating on their own, it is to ensure the safety of users' funds and maximize user value. "Ant Financial wants to build a large ecosystem of cooperation and sharing," Peng Lei emphasized.

One year after Ant Financial, Peng Lei described Ant's layout as "following demand and people". She said that Ant Financial has no clear plan to enter which field in the future, nor has it considered issues such as listing. When answering questions from the media, Peng Lei said that she currently spends most of her energy on the team and company culture, and no longer intervenes in specific business. Ant Financial President Jing Xiandong also said that although he is responsible for the operation of Ant Financial Group, he does not care about financial statements. He said that Ant Financial considers "how many users it has served and how much value it has created for users."

Today, Ant Financial is a well-deserved new financial giant. The young and professional executive team is refreshing, and the development achievements in the past year are obvious to all. Previously, Ant has always emphasized its identity as a public company and realized its social value.

However, there is still not much transparency in terms of specific performance. On the Sharing Day, Jing Xiandong has been emphasizing that Ant Financial is not for profit, but focuses on user value, and believes that creating value will definitely get a reasonable return. Such a statement may gain praise, but creating social value and financial value at the same time can convince the public and the media.