How to identify unreliable P2P platforms?

Near the end of the year, the high-speed development of the P2P industry not only encountered capital winters, but also faced the hustle and bustle of negligence. In particular, before the regulatory rules were finalized, the P2P industry was a mixed bag. Many investors did not understand whether the background of the platform was real, whether there was a reliable depository of funds, how high the interest risk was, and so on. The investment was made swiftly and eventually led to investors. Damage to the interests of. How can we effectively identify unreliable platforms in the mixed P2P industry?

18% interest should be vigilant

P2P platform wants to win the hearts and minds of investors and does not hesitate to induce high interest rates. However, high returns are accompanied by high risks. This golden rule in the investment field also applies to the online loan industry. In the mixed P2P industry, the platform yield is also uneven. Investors should be vigilant when faced with high interest rates and they should not lose watermelon in order to pick up sesame seeds.

According to data from the Lending Home, the P2P platform's return rate ranges from a low of 4% to over 20%. There are 260 platforms with an average revenue of 20%, including high interest rates of 30% and 40%. In these high-interest platforms, there are not a few platforms that have difficulties in cashing out and have gone out of business or even have run. Beijing Business Daily reporter opened one of the websites that showed the running route, Yi Cheng Financial. The bright red pages only showed “New Starting Point”, “Upgrade Maintenance”, and “Hubei Wanbao Wealth Asset Management Co., Ltd.” , "2015-11-18" and several other words.

The Paris Financial Network recently exposed by the Beijing Business Daily had a daily interest rate of 3% and an annualized return of more than 10 times. Such a high interest rate had to be questioned. Zhang Yexia, a senior researcher at Yingcan Consulting, reminded investors that investors must carefully consider the platform that they choose to borrow more than 24% annually. In fact, according to the "Applicable Laws and Regulations on Private Lending Cases," the interest rates agreed between the lenders and borrowers exceed the annual interest rate of 24% and will not be protected. The agreed interest rate exceeds the annual interest rate of 36%, and the excess interest agreement is invalid.

In reality, the P2P platform's interest rate exceeds 18% should be vigilant. A P2P platform staff member told Beijing Daily News that the platform's lending rate is generally divided into the interest rate for investors, the operating rate of the platform, and some extra charges to avoid risks. If the investor's interest rate exceeds 18%, plus 2%-3% of operating expenses and other additional expenses, the lending rate is likely to exceed 24%. Such interest rates are not protected by law, and high interest rates increase the default risk of the borrower and are not conducive to the safe operation of the platform.

"Investors should also consider the overall level of the industry when they consider the platform interest rate," said Zhang Yexia. It is worth noting that differences in interest rates also occur for different targets. Zhang Yexia believes that investors must ask a few more questions about the high interest rate of the platform. Different regions and different borrowing targets will result in different interest rates. The underlying interest rates such as financial leasing will be relatively low. If such a target has a very high interest rate, you must be vigilant.

For the high-interest rate platform, the silver rate network analyst pointed out that behind the high-income may be someone is making up a beautiful lie story. For example, an internet financial platform mainly deals with financial lease claims. Its platform product yield is 9%-14.6%, while the average profit margin of real businesses in the finance leasing industry is only about 8%. And high-interest platforms such as 3M financial mutual assistance do not even have projects and no source of revenue. This model is difficult to last, and it is only a matter of time before the explosion.

Platform information needs to be verified

When choosing an investment platform, investors should make full investigations. Knowing yourself and knowing each other can guarantee the safety of funds.

The P2P platform has issued some false news in order to compete for customers to exaggerate marketing. Some platforms claim that the registered capital is tens of millions or even hundreds of millions, but the paid-in capital is zero or a huge difference from the registered capital. Zhang Yexia believes that when investors choose an investment platform, they must inspect and verify the authenticity of platform information. Investors can log on to the National Enterprise Credit Information Disclosure System to verify the company’s registered capital, major shareholders, and other information.

For controlling shareholders and corporate records, you can search Baidu's search for "list of untrustworthy persons" for corresponding information, and you can also go to the official website of the Supreme People's Court of China. As for the problems that the company's business scope may include in the P2P industry, the staff of a certain platform told the Beijing Business Daily reporter that investment advice and financial information services are generally used. As the regulations have not yet been issued, there is no unified regulation.

Zhang Yexia suggested that if there are conditions, investors can visit the platform company for field trips. Some problem platforms generally have no office address or are extremely simple. The office address is in some remote areas.

In addition, investors should pay more attention to office address, area, rent and lease information during the field trip. Offices that have office addresses but are unusually small and whose lease contracts start and end within 3 months are more suspicious. Investors can also log on to some website traffic monitoring websites to check the website's daily page views. The high traffic volume of the platform indicates that the platform has strong marketing capabilities and is attractive to investors.

The shareholder background of the platform plays an important role in the safe operation of the platform. In this regard, Zhang Yexia believes that investors must do a good job of investigating the background of the shareholders of the platform and check whether the platform's management team structure is reasonable and whether there are banks and other traditional financial institutions' employees. For the pictures uploaded by the platform, some of the qualifications or personnel information can be identified by some mapping tools, and some platforms will steal images of some senior executives.

For example, Paris Financial Network can use BNP Paribas as its incriminating means to verify with related parties such as BNP Paribas. Zhang Yexia added that for the fund custody bank of the platform, it is also possible to contact the relevant bank for verification.

It is worth mentioning that the registered domain name of the platform should also be given attention. Zhang Yexia said that the general formal platform will only have one domain name. If the platform has multiple domain names and often changes, it should be vigilant. It's doubtful if the platform's domain name is strange or unrelated to the platform name. It also does not rule out that some formal platform domain names are bought and other domain names may have to be used.

Some industry insiders warned that investors should also pay attention to whether the number of borrowings and the amount of the target of the platform match. If the amount of borrowings is higher than the number of borrowings, there is a problem with the demolition of the platform. For the issue of platform maturity mismatch, it is necessary to examine whether the target period and the loan period match each other. For example, some of the financial lease projects generally have a long period of time, but the loan period is short, and there is a problem of mismatching the period. In addition, if the platform borrower's concentration is high, the repayment account faced by the platform is relatively risky. Once a few large defaults occur, the risk of running the platform will increase.

There is a risk of paying for endorsements

The "Guidance Opinions" issued by the Central Bank earlier this year also explicitly requires that the P2P platform client funds third-party depository system to realize the management of customer funds and the self-employed fund's own funds. However, many platforms use the banner of cooperating with third-party payment agencies on the page. People mistakenly believe that the platform has funds to be managed and investors need to pay great attention.

Third-party fund custody means that the capital flow runs in a third-party fund custody company without passing through the platform account, thereby avoiding the risk that the platform maliciously misappropriates trading funds to investors. “Once fund escrow is done, it means that the various costs of the platform are high. The platform is fundamentally constrained by funds in its operations. It is more complicated than other platforms in the registration process.” said a person in charge of the P2P platform. . Therefore, many fraudulent platforms do not actually hold funds in third-party institutions or banks. They just use the name of third-party funds to cheat investors.

What needs to be vigilant is that some platforms claim funds are escrowed in third-party payment agencies. Actually, however, third-party payment agencies only provide a payment interface for these platforms, not third-party funds. For example, the customer service of Paris Financial Network stated that the funds of their platform are hosted on the Internet. However, a reporter from Beijing Commercial Daily found that during the process of recharging a Paris financial network account, the Paris financial website did have a recharging channel for payment. However, the customer service provided by Beijing Express reported to Beijing Daily News that Paris Financial Network is not their cooperative merchant. In fact, E-payment provides only one payment channel, not fund custody.

There are also some platforms claiming that they have signed an agreement with the bank for custody of funds, but the funds have not really been hosted on banks. For example, an internet financial platform had previously advertised on the website and signed a custody agreement with a joint-stock bank in July, but on the platform. After being investigated by the supervisory level, the joint-stock bank came out and clarified that “the agreement has not been implemented since the docking system of the two parties has not been developed yet”. Therefore, it is recommended that investors investigating platforms need to conduct investigations or confirm directly to third-party payment agencies or banks.

How to identify true and false fund hosting? The person in charge of the above-mentioned P2P platform told the Beijing Business Daily reporter that the easiest way to identify false fund custody is to personally register the platform and register the platform account to see if it is required to register the account of a third-party payment institution. If you can invest after registering for a platform account, the platform must have no third-party funds to host. In addition, if you request to open a third-party hosting after registration, but simply include your mobile phone number and real-name information, and did not jump to the third-party hosting platform's own website for a variety of security checks, it also shows that hosting is false .

Fake capital custody is prone to capital pools, and the platform can arbitrarily use client funds and invest in channels that investors do not know. The probability of running on this platform is also great.

Yin Xianlei P2P network loan analyst Li Xianru said that the P2P investment is most afraid of the platform is self-financing, reeling run. Only the establishment of a real customer depository of funds, the funds directly between the investor and the borrower, the platform can not reach the investor's money, in order to effectively curb platform repayments run. In this sense, all platforms that do not establish user custody of funds are worthy of caution.