CreditEase
Among China’s young, independent, management firms, CreditEase has not only maintained robust business growth thanks to its investment and service capabilities, but also demonstrated leadership on multiple fronts, including fintech application, investor education and regulatory compliance in domestic wealth management.
CreditEase’s business growth continues to impress its domestic peers. As of March 2018, its assets under management topped Rmb140 billion ($22 billion), a jump of 40% from the end of 2016. At the same time, the number of its ultra-high net-worth clients – those with AuM of Rmb10 million or more – surged 85% from a year earlier.
A primary driver of that growth is CreditEase’s ability to generate stable and attractive returns from investments both inside and outside China, and across asset classes. Overseas and fund of funds (FoFs) assets each account for more than 20% of total assets, while equities account for 40%.
In 2017, its FoFs achieved investment returns well above the market average. As of March this year, the firm had cumulative revenues from fixed income products of more than Rmb200 billion from its clients. Nearly all of the products had realized expect gains, with no single case of loss in principal and only a tiny proportion showing neither gain or loss.
While expanding its service range through traditional channels, CreditEase continues to lead its domestic peers in deploying fintech to optimize investment processes and enable customized asset allocation for customers.
Last year, it launched an artificial intelligence platform to improve the efficiency of early-stage vetting and screening for its private equity investments. It has also applied big data analysis in client segmentation to enable better and more comprehensive understanding of client profiles and needs.
CreditEase has also been a leader in investor education. It has not only organized education programmes for high net-worth clients, but also created educational content on wealth management for school children in dozens of Chinese cities.
Since 2016, it has published an annual white paper on global asset allocation for Chinese investors.
On top of that, CreditEase has played a key role in establishing an industry body, the China Internet Finance Association, to standardize online wealth management practices and promote regulatory compliance. It’s head of wealth management is Lin Hou.