Sina Micro Wealth's Rapid March: A Subversive Game for Latecomers

It seems that overnight, those who used to check the returns of baby-related financial products have lost their enthusiasm and are too lazy to even ask for them. No wonder the returns are dismal, mostly fluctuating a little above 4%, which has become useless.

When money was scarce, every similar financial management platform launched with a return of more than 7%, which was very impressive. In the past year or so, more than 60 platforms have emerged in China. Now it is no longer possible. The overall monetary policy is stable and loose, and the supply of funds is not so tight. It is difficult for them to maintain a high rate of return as they only correspond to money market funds.

Of course, the bond allocation can be adjusted. But the main purpose of baby users is to make quick money and have high liquidity requirements, so don't expect to put shackles on them.

Are there no more financial platforms to play with? You can choose P2P, but don't use too many. But there is no guarantee that they will run away, which is scary.

If there is a platform that not only corresponds to money market funds but is supported by a wider range of asset transactions, which is not only safe and reliable but also can provide fixed-income, fixed-term financial management services with a yield of more than 8%, would you think it is reliable?

I'm talking about Sina Weibo Fortune.

Sina Weicaifu, is the latecomer going to disrupt it?

In fact, Micro Wealth was born on April 22 this year, more than 180 days ago. Two days ago, Li Yadan, vice president of Sina Finance, told Quark Review and other media in Shanghai that Sina Micro Wealth carries the dream of Sina Internet Finance. In 2013, after the group established the strategic position of Internet finance, it tried to take advantage of Sina's media platform to create an open Internet finance counter to provide convenient and safe Internet financial services for investors, and Micro Wealth came into being.

Up to now, in more than 180 days, the total transaction volume of Weicaifu has reached nearly 1.4 billion yuan under the condition of a single transaction amount of 5,000 yuan. Among them, the transaction volume in September and October was 390 million yuan and 481 million yuan respectively.

"It can be said that this is a set of data without any water." Zheng Xinwei, product manager of Weicaiwu, said on the same day.

However, after all, it was born later, so why did Weicaifu have a higher return rate than the average rate of return of the baby category at the beginning, and it continued for two quarters? You know, Sina’s funding cannot be compared with BAT, and it is also relatively weak among the major portals.

Zheng Xinwei said that Weicaifu does not operate its own business, but only acts as a trading platform. It is an open Internet direct finance counter that links buyers and sellers. He said that direct finance accounts for only 17% in China, while it accounts for 70% in the United States, so the opportunity is still relatively large. The reason why it has maintained an average return of 8% for two quarters is mainly based on the following three services provided by Weicaifu:

1. It can help financial management users find safe, attractive, and usually difficult-to-reach back-end financial assets;

2. It can help users complete financial investment very easily and conveniently on the platform;

3. The assets, products and transactions on the platform are all managed by Sina Weicaifu. At the same time, Weicaifu and Yongan Insurance jointly provide account security protection.

Log in to the homepage of Weicaifu, and you will find that it is very different from baby-type financial management. Although it also corresponds to a considerable part of money market funds, it has more types of financial assets. Since its launch in April, Weicaifu has launched 12 major categories of assets, such as baby-type piggy banks, bills, small and medium-sized enterprise bonds, physical repurchase (white wine, etc.), supply chain finance, hotel equity (cooperation with Portofino Hotel Group), gold investment and financial management products "Jinshengbao", factoring products, bank-based financial management products, etc.

In my impression, although the Internet financial platforms built by BAT and JD.com are louder than Sina, they are not as rich as Sina in terms of the richness of financial products. From the perspective of product selection and openness, it is very similar to an Internet financial supermarket. From a marketing perspective, it mainly adopts rush buying, and its style is even similar to the flash sales of e-commerce platforms. According to the data provided by Zheng Xinwei, the highest daily transaction volume of Weicaifu platform reached 56 million yuan, and the fastest time for a single product to sell out was 12.8 seconds.

It is indeed fast enough. However, this is related to the total amount of a single product and the time limit of financial management. Unlike completely standardized financial management platforms, Sina Weicaifu mostly chooses non-standard products, which leads to its fund pool expansion far less than that of the original babies. The latter has now reached 1.5 trillion.

But Weicaifu is taking a more refined path and building an ecosystem. That day, when I went there, among the many partners cooperating with Weicaifu, I saw my old colleague Hong Qihua from Yicai. He is the CEO of Shanghai Fushang Finance (Piaobioke), which mainly provides online loan services based on bill management. He revealed that the company is one of Weicaifu’s earliest partners, and he values ​​the openness of the Weicaifu platform. Zheng Xinwei said that bill assets are indeed a business that Weicaifu has "put a lot of effort" on, because it is very safe and banks accept it unconditionally, and it will be more focused in the future.

But Zheng Xinwei admitted that although there are already 12 categories, they are far from enough to satisfy the enthusiasm of financial management users, and valuable financial assets are very scarce, which is a major challenge for Micro Wealth.

This may also be the reason why Weicaifu limits the single financial management amount to 5,000 yuan. The official statement is that this amount is suitable for losers, but I think it is more like a means to attract popularity in the early stage.

In 2013, Sina Chairman and CEO Cao Guowei emphasized that big data is the core of Internet finance. Therefore, many people have been paying attention to the integration between Weicaifu and Weibo. Li Yadan said that Weibo has huge traffic and is also a very large big data platform. Weibo wanted to provide data to Weicaifu a long time ago, but Weicaifu has not yet fully opened it. It can be said that it "dare not" because, in the past six months, one of the biggest pressures of Weicaifu is the supply of high-quality assets. A product was snapped up in 12.8 seconds. If Weibo users are introduced, the assets on the platform are limited and the experience will be very bad.

Building Internet Finance, Cao Guowei's Sense of Crisis

Judging from the capital pool, Weicaifu is indeed cultivating its business in a slow-paced manner.

However, five days before the Shanghai Promotion and Communication Conference, Li Yadan and others had just finished the promotion in Beijing. Twice a week, Sina Finance seemed very urgent. Li Yadan said that Micro Wealth had higher demands.

This should be Sina Group's eagerness to show its confidence in expanding Internet finance. Sina Internet Finance started in 2013. But its preparation can be traced back to the gestation period of Sina Pay. In July last year, after Sina Pay officially obtained the license from the regulatory authorities, Sina began to accelerate its layout. The real organizational structure was not formed until the end of last year. During this period, BAT, Suning Cloud Commerce, and JD.com have already launched specific products.

Sina, which was much slower, did not rush to join the baby financial management melee, but began to build a more open Internet financial management platform.

Li Yadan said that even now, the structure of Sina Internet Finance is still a virtual structure, and there is no "Sina Internet Finance Company". Sina Finance mainly includes the following sectors:

1. Running parallel to Weicaifu are two other companies with the word “wei” in their names, namely Weifuzhi and Weicaopan.

2. The financial channel of the media sector. Recently, it has created a financial brand called "Financial Planner" which has just been launched.

3. Automobile Division: Use the division system to operate automobile commercialization.

4. Sina YiJu. The Gold Exchange that went online some time ago is related to real estate.

Li Yadan said that Weicaifu carries the transaction scenario, with Sina Pay at the bottom and many institutions at the top, such as the auto channel, auto finance, real estate finance, etc. In the future, it will include things such as personal credit. Zheng Xinwei said that Weicaifu has also formed a similar structure to the Alipay module. In terms of form, Wei Wallet is equivalent to Alipay, the piggy bank is Yu'ebao, and Weicaifu is similar to Zhaocaibao.

It seems that Sina Finance is indeed more stable than many other companies. If we recall what Sina Chairman and CEO Cao Guowei said, we can understand its intentions: it is not a simple financial management tool, but a key strategic layout of Sina.

At the Q2 earnings analyst meeting this year, Cao Guowei said that strengthening the investment in payment and financial management platform Weicaifu is an "important foundation" for Sina to enter Internet finance. Sina must have its own platform and payment "to create a financial channel like a shopping mall", which is a "very important first step". Secondly, Sina will build a vertical industry financial platform. The "Fangjinsuo" jointly launched by Sina and YiJu is a real estate financial platform with a huge market. He also did not forget to mention Sina Auto Finance.

It can be seen that Sina Finance's initial pace was a bit slow, which was related to Cao Guowei's ambition: "We are investing in these areas, and will accelerate the pace of investment in Internet finance in the second half of the year, so as to build a stronger platform to seize the opportunities of Internet finance."

It was logical for Sina Finance to go all out in the last two months of 2014. I also felt Cao Guowei's sense of crisis. Compared with its competitors, Sina has huge traffic, but its monetization channels in the past few years are single, mainly advertising, concentrated in the automotive and real estate fields, of which automobiles account for one-third. The Q2 financial report shows that the growth of this field has slowed down significantly. Cao Guowei frankly admitted that the growth of brand-based automotive advertising has been limited, and new methods must be developed. After Weibo went public, Sina could no longer tolerate the opportunity to waste the platform's huge traffic. Before new models such as mobile Internet advertising have really exploded, Internet finance should be said to be Sina's biggest opportunity to overtake on the curve.

I want to add a paragraph. Sina.com Editor-in-Chief Chen Tong left, and many people only interpreted it as a content outlet. I think this is the run-on effect of the above strategy, and Sina has reached a huge window of opportunity for transformation.

Judging from the rhythm and structure of Sina Finance, this latecomer is expected to play a disruptive game.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.