"It's too expensive." A person from the operation department of the loan platform said to reporters.

By "expensive", he refers to the cost of acquiring customers through the information flow platform. The so-called information flow platform is mainly an Internet short video platform.

"At the end of last year, our customer acquisition cost through the information flow platform was close to the peak of 30 yuan per person. The leaders of the enterprise directly issued a dead order at the internal meeting, requiring that the customer acquisition expenses must be reduced by 0% within the year, otherwise the year-end bonus of the entire operation team will be difficult to guarantee. He told reporters.

The reporter learned from a number of consumer finance platforms that the average customer acquisition cost of the current consumer finance industry is 3000 yuan ~ 0 yuan / person, and due to the different customer acquisition strategies of different consumer financial institutions, there are many differences in their customer acquisition costs. For example, in the fourth quarter of each year, in order to "push" the loan scale and interest income of individual consumer financial institutions to acquire customers in batches, they will greatly increase marketing investment in information flow platforms, resulting in the cost of customer acquisition exceeding 0 yuan/person in a certain period of time, or even about 0 yuan/person.

Industry insiders said that in the future, the industry will continue to expand customer acquisition channels and reduce consumer credit interest rates to promote the development of the consumer economy, but the game of reducing customer acquisition costs will profoundly affect the consumer credit service ecology.

Consumer financial institutions continue to increase customer acquisition on short video platforms

As people increasingly prefer to obtain information through Internet short video platforms, more and more consumer financial institutions regard short video and other information flow platforms as new "traffic entrances".

The reporter noted that in recent years, consumer financial institutions and consumer financial products such as Qifu Technology, Xiaoying Technology, Good Installment, and Youqian Hua have entered short video platforms such as Douyin, opening a new journey of consumer finance to gain customers.

The reporter opened a number of consumer financial product and service videos on the Douyin platform and found that these videos often highlight the characteristics of "interest-free use for a period of time, high credit line, low annualized interest rate, rapid arrival of loan funds, large number of installment repayments, and only ID card and mobile phone number can apply for a quota", attracting video platform users who are in urgent need of capital turnover to quickly apply for online consumer loans.

"Especially in the environment where consumer finance has entered the competition of existing customer groups, new traffic entrances mean new customer groups and business scale growth space. This is extremely attractive to lending platforms and licensed consumer financial institutions that have been listed or are planning to go public. A person in charge of a loan platform pointed out.

It should be noted that the traffic effect of short video platforms has also driven the rapid development of the consumer finance business of short video platforms.

據媒體報導，2023年底，一家國內大型短視頻平臺旗下消費金融平臺的放貸餘額約為3500億元，但在2023年初，這個數值不足千億元。如此的業務增長速度，吸引了眾多消費金融公司入駐。

According to the "China Consumer Finance Company Development Report (2022)" released by the China Banking Association, all consumer finance companies have used online third-party drainage to acquire customers in 0 years. Among them, 0 consumer financial institutions have more than 0% of online third-party drainage, an increase of 0 from 0 years; Half of the consumer financial institutions said that the proportion of online third-party delivery channels increased year-on-year compared with 0 years.

"In order to promote the continuous growth of business scale and number of users, even if the cost of customer acquisition continues to rise, we are still adding customer acquisition on information flow platforms such as short videos." The person in charge of the above-mentioned loan platform told reporters that in the middle of last year, the proportion of customers on the information flow platform once exceeded 75%.

The reporter learned that the increasing dependence on the information flow platform to obtain customers has caused some consumer financial institutions to be "vigilant". In order to diversify customer acquisition channels and reduce customer acquisition costs, some consumer financial institutions have been trying to increase the proportion of independent customer acquisition in recent years.

At present, the proprietary business of some licensed consumer financial institutions has achieved certain results.

比如，近年來，海爾消費金融持續專注自營能力建設，聚焦場景金融業務，滿足新市民及年輕群體在教育、醫美、家電等場景的金融需求。目前，海爾消費金融簽約逾1.1萬家合作商戶，累計服務逾300萬使用者。

According to the data of Zhaolian Consumer Finance, at the end of 9700, the balance of loans from its self-operated customer acquisition and shareholder synergistic channels accounted for about 0%. According to data from Consumer Finance, as of the end of October last year, the proportion of self-operated channel customer loans reached 0.0%.

However, not all licensed consumer financial institutions and lenders have been able to make business breakthroughs in self-acquiring customers.

The data disclosed in the "China Consumer Finance Company Development Report (20)" also shows that in 0 years, 0 consumer finance companies launched their business through online independent advertising, of which 0 self-launched enterprises accounted for more than 0%; However, there are 0 consumer finance companies with self-operated channels below 0%.

The business director of a licensed consumer financial institution pointed out to reporters that in recent years, they have also increased the construction of independent customer acquisition channels, on the one hand, they have carried out drainage cooperation with scene parties to embed consumer loan products and services in relevant scenarios; On the other hand, the self-built online e-commerce platform serves as an important support for independent drainage.

However, these initiatives have not had the desired effect. The reason for this is that the traffic has been slow to "not improve". Although the traffic of their own online e-commerce platform rebounded for a while, the traffic dropped quickly after the event. Later, they found that during the preferential consumption campaign, the new traffic mainly came from the wool party. Second, enterprises lack corresponding e-commerce operation and traffic management talents, and it is difficult to build sustainable independent customer acquisition capabilities. In the end, they can only return to information flow platforms such as short videos to acquire customers. After all, compared with other third-party drainage channels, short video platforms are relatively better at mass customer acquisition and driving significant growth in business scale.

The reporter learned that although many consumer financial institutions are still working hard to expand their independent customer acquisition business, the proportion of customer acquisition on short video platforms is still high, generally accounting for "half of the country".

The cost of customer acquisition through short video platforms is rising

Over-reliance on information streaming platforms such as short videos to acquire customers is bringing a new "unbearable burden" to consumer financial institutions, starting with the rising cost of customer acquisition.

At present, the fees charged by short video platforms for providing customer acquisition services to financial institutions are mainly divided into two aspects: first, the advertising fees for credit products and services of relevant consumer financial institutions; The second is the service fee recommended by potential credit customers to consumer financial institutions, that is, based on its own traffic advantages, the short video platform will introduce different types of users with potential credit needs to different consumer financial institutions through data analysis, and once the consumer financial institution completes the risk control credit and issues loans, the short video platform can charge a certain percentage of the service fee.

A person from the operation department of the above-mentioned loan institution pointed out to reporters that due to the high dependence of loan platforms and licensed consumer financial institutions on the information flow platform to acquire customers, coupled with the bidding strategy of the information flow platform, the two customer acquisition expenditures continued to soar. For example, in some time periods when the number of customers is relatively high, the short video platform will give priority to the credit service video of the financial institution with the highest bid to potential customers based on the quotations of each financial institution. In order to obtain these customer resources, many financial institutions can only continue to raise their quotations, resulting in a rising cost of customer acquisition.

"In the fourth quarter of last year, in order to obtain customers in batches and make profits on scale, we asked around for the quotations of our peers, and on this basis, we increased the price and obtained the priority push rights of credit service videos in certain time periods." He pointed out that this has led to a continuous rise in related customer acquisition costs, once approaching a peak of 3000 yuan/person.

A person from the operation department of a licensed consumer financial institution told reporters that during the 2100 year, the per capita customer acquisition cost (through credit and loans) from the short video information flow platform was about 0 yuan, but in 0 years, this value reached 0 yuan, and in the middle of 0 years, this value further rose to 0 yuan.

The business director of the above-mentioned licensed consumer financial institution told reporters that in order to reduce the cost of customer acquisition on the information flow platform, they are trying to increase their independent customer acquisition efforts, including direct cooperation with offline consumption scenarios to attract traffic. However, after a period of attempts, the effect of independent customer acquisition is not obvious, and the per capita customer acquisition cost is still more than 400 yuan, which is still at least 0 yuan higher than the customer acquisition cost in 0 years.

記者注意到，隨著獲客成本增加，部分助貸平臺的銷售與營銷費用節節攀升。信也科技財報顯示，去年企業銷售和營銷費用達到20.14億元，較2023年的18.874億元有所增加，原因是企業更積極主動地爭取客戶，重點關注中國和國際市場的優質借款人。與此對應的是，截至2024年底，信也科技的國內累計借款人超過2680萬，全年交易額達到1961億元，同比增長5.2%。

In order to prevent the cost of customer acquisition from soaring as much as possible, many lending platforms and licensed consumer financial institutions have adopted two response strategies: one is to sign a relatively long-term cooperation agreement with the information flow platform to obtain the priority push rights of consumer credit service videos with a quotation slightly higher than the industry level, so that credit product information can reach the target customer group more extensively; The second is to formulate a customer acquisition quotation strategy in the market, but this requires the operation team of financial institutions to have accurate research and prediction capabilities on the fluctuation trend of market quotation and customer acquisition costs, so that financial institutions can seize some opportunities to push consumer credit product and service videos at low prices.

"In the past, we were able to find some customer acquisition time periods that other financial institutions had not yet paid attention to, and pushed consumer credit service videos at lower prices to achieve batch customer acquisition, thereby effectively reducing customer acquisition costs. But now, as financial institutions increasingly rely on information flow platforms to acquire customers, and various customer acquisition strategies are becoming more homogeneous, it is difficult to find a new low-cost customer acquisition window. The above-mentioned loan platform operation department pointed out to reporters that in the past two years, the cost of consumer financial institutions to acquire customers through the information flow platform has generally been "rising and rising".

Previously, in order to expand the scale of business and the number of users, the leader of his lending platform did not "care" about this. However, with the increasing urgency of enterprises to reduce costs and increase efficiency, enterprise leaders can no longer tolerate the customer acquisition cost of the information flow platform of about 30 yuan/person, and directly require the entire business department to reduce the customer acquisition cost by 0%.

"Behind this is the increase in the overdue rate of users, which has increased the pressure on the profitability of the loan platform. As a result, the company's leaders began to hope to reduce the cost of customer acquisition, so as to reduce the cost of consumer credit services for a single customer, so that the company can continue to maintain strong profitability. He explained to reporters.

The reporter noticed that some loan platforms have begun to "control" marketing expenses. For example, last year's financial report showed that its sales and marketing expenses were 516.0 billion yuan, a decrease from 0.0 billion yuan in the same period of 0, due to the improvement of customer acquisition efficiency.

The reporter learned that many consumer financial institutions are now trying to reduce other operating costs in order to "hedge" the pressure of rising customer acquisition costs. For example, on the one hand, they have shifted more of the guaranteed heavy asset loan business to the pure diversion of the asset-light loan business to reduce the capital occupation and free up more funds for customer acquisition expenses. On the other hand, by increasing the issuance of asset securitization products and financial bonds to achieve low-interest fundraising, by reducing financing costs, so as to provide more working capital to support customer acquisition expenses.

The rise of mutual drainage cooperation among financial institutions

In the face of the high cost of customer acquisition for short video information flow platforms, more and more loan platforms and licensed consumer financial institutions are considering expanding customer acquisition channels to "reduce costs".

The above-mentioned loan platform operation department revealed to reporters that after the company's leaders asked to reduce the cost of customer acquisition by 30%, they readjusted the customer acquisition method internally, first, to increase the intensity of SMS push to increase the proportion of independent direct customer acquisition; The second is to sign drainage cooperation agreements with websites such as mother and child, tourism and other websites, embed consumer credit products and services in the payment interface, and increase the proportion of customer acquisition in third-party vertical consumption scenarios; The third is to carry out mutual diversion cooperation with other lending platforms and licensed consumer financial institutions.

After all, after acquiring customers through the information flow platform, not every user can meet the credit risk control requirements and entry thresholds of financial institutions, so users who fail to obtain credit become their "idle customer resources". Some lending platforms and licensed consumer financial institutions have begun to consider diverting these "idle customer resources" to other financial institutions, and if the latter is willing to provide loan services, the former can earn corresponding "customer acquisition income".

"In fact, there is a lot of room for development in the mutual drainage and diversion cooperation between lending platforms, lending platforms and licensed consumer financial institutions. Because the credit risk control characteristics of each financial institution and customer preferences are different, through mutual drainage of each other, on the one hand, they can find suitable consumer credit products and services for customers and improve the accessibility of consumer credit; On the other hand, it can also allow financial institutions to charge more and reduce the overall cost of customer acquisition. The person from the operation department of the loan platform bluntly told reporters that after more than 3 months of attempts, their customer acquisition structure has changed significantly. In the past, the proportion of customer acquisition on information flow platforms exceeded 0%, but now this value has dropped to about 0%; The proportion of customers acquired through websites such as mother and child, travel and other websites increased by at least 0 percentage points; The proportion of independent direct customer acquisition of SMS push also increased by about 0 percentage points.

However, he is still unsure whether this move can achieve the goal of reducing customer acquisition expenses by 2000% as required by the company's leaders. At present, their average customer acquisition cost is still close to 0 yuan/person, and in order to achieve the ideal target value of less than 0 yuan/person, it is still necessary to further reduce the proportion of customer acquisition on information flow platforms and increase the proportion of other independent customer acquisition channels.

The business director of the above-mentioned licensed consumer financial institution told reporters that in order to reduce the cost of customer acquisition on the information flow platform, they are also trying to carry out diversion cooperation with their peers. At present, the diversion quotation given by other licensed consumer financial institutions and loan assistance platforms (customers who can pass their credit risk control review and loan issuance) is about 500 yuan ~ 0 yuan per person lower than that of the information flow platform.

He bluntly said that one of the major challenges in the current business is how to do a good job of compliance. In order to avoid the problem of illegal transfer of personal information, they will sign corresponding personal information use agreements with users at the stage of applying for consumer loans, so as to help them promote to other financial institutions and make the relevant diversion and drainage work more compliant.

The business director of the licensed consumer financial institution told reporters that because his licensed consumer financial institution also requires the cost of customer acquisition to be reduced to less than 10 yuan per person, they have internally calculated that if the proportion of customer acquisition brought about by mutual drainage cooperation between financial institutions can increase by 0 percentage points, they will have a higher certainty to complete this requirement.

"At present, many users who have been rejected for loans also hope to recommend them to other financial institutions, because this helps them get in touch with more suitable consumer credit products and consumer credit interest rates, and have a higher probability of obtaining consumer loans to solve some of their daily capital turnover needs." He said bluntly.

Institutions try new lending strategies to recoup costs as quickly as possible

The reporter learned that in order to recover the relatively high cost of customer acquisition as soon as possible, some loan platforms are trying new lending strategies.

前述助貸平臺運營部門人士向記者透露，以往他們的放貸策略是“頭輕腳重”，即首筆信貸發放金額最多只有數千元，當借款人按期還款后，再逐步增加放貸金額，直到單筆放款額超過1萬元；如今，他們的放貸策略更像是“頭重腳輕”，即首筆信貸發放金額就超過1萬元，當借款人按期償還部分利息本金后，再繼續給予後續放貸資金，但單筆放款額是逐次遞減的，直到單筆放款額僅有3000元~4000元。

According to him, this move has two major benefits: first, the first credit loan amount is larger, which can create more loan interest income, which will help improve the overall profitability and performance of the platform; Second, the higher amount of the first credit loan can attract more users to choose them and drive the expansion of business scale. Especially at the end of last year, after the customer acquisition cost through the information flow platform was close to 24 yuan/person, the business department suddenly felt that the annualized interest rate of 0% could no longer achieve "breakeven", and it must "make a fuss" in terms of interest income - collect as much loan interest as possible to "cover" the excessively high customer acquisition cost.

"We have internally calculated that if we follow the 'top-heavy' lending strategy, we need to recycle 2 to 0 times to a single customer to recover the customer's overall operating costs (including customer acquisition costs), but through the 'top-heavy' lending strategy, we only need to recycle 0 times to basically recover the overall operating costs of this customer." He bluntly said that this is undoubtedly more attractive to loan platforms that urgently need to recover the high cost of customer acquisition.

However, this approach also has a clear "double-edged sword effect".

"Due to the large increase in the amount of first credit loans, the repayment ability of users is facing a greater test. Nowadays, we are particularly concerned about the corresponding increase in the risk of overdue repayment by users, resulting in a significant increase in the risk of bad debts on the platform. The person from the operation department of the loan platform told reporters. According to the analysis of recent credit repayment data, this risk cannot be ignored - due to the rising repayment overdue rate, the average post-loan management cost of a single user of the loan platform it works for has risen rapidly, almost the same as the customer acquisition cost.

This also means that the recovery cycle of the overall operating costs of customers, such as the customer acquisition cost of the loan platform, has been extended again.

Since last year, some lending platforms and licensed consumer financial institutions have also moderately raised the consumer credit interest rates of some customer groups, as a major measure to avoid credit risks and recover customer costs as soon as possible.

"In the meantime, we also provide a corresponding customer negotiation mechanism, if credit users encounter some force majeure factors in daily life, they can apply for loan interest rate reduction, and we will also give corresponding loan interest rate adjustment and more flexible repayment methods after verifying the relevant situation of customers." The business director of the above-mentioned licensed consumer financial institution told reporters.

In the future, under the trend of the country's active development of consumer finance to help boost consumption, loan platforms and licensed consumer financial institutions still need to continue to reduce consumer credit interest rates to stimulate greater consumption potential of the public, and continuous reduction of customer acquisition costs will become an important factor affecting whether consumer credit interest rates can be reduced.

National Business Daily