Bank employees are forced to make online purchases to offset their performance! Behind it lies a gray industry chain, with indicators | deposits | banks under heavy assessment pressure
"The price at the end of the month has been released and can be reserved. Welcome to inquire." Lingling, an employee of a certain stock company in Guangdong, received a message from a promotion agency during the quarter end performance sprint stage. Since the beginning of this year, she has found that there have been some online stores that focus on "deposit impulse" and "proxy promotion indicators". With the payment of corresponding intermediary fees, they can quickly complete various bank performance indicators such as deposit volume, personal pension account opening volume, and credit card opening volume.
In fact, spiritual experiences are not an exception. Recently, a group of "promotion intermediaries" have emerged on social media and online shopping platforms to help bank employees achieve their targets. They wander between banks, customers, and employees, skillfully linking funds, assisting in completing various indicators, seeking arbitrage opportunities, and some stores can achieve a sales target of over 40000 orders for goods. At the same time, more and more bank employees are choosing to complete a variety of performance indicators through online shopping.
The rise of "promotion intermediaries" has led to online stores selling over 40000 individual products per month
Lingling discovered this type of promotion intermediary on a certain social platform. After posting a news update related to banks, someone in the comment section mentioned that it can help Lingling Dai achieve its targets and also mentioned opening a wired online store.
The reporter followed Ling Ling's instructions and searched for a large number of related products on an online shopping platform using keywords such as "deposit volume", "bank indicators", and "bank promotion". Many of these products have performed well in monthly sales, with the highest being the software registration agency business of a certain bank, with monthly sales exceeding 40000 units.
However, according to industry insiders, this type of sales may not necessarily reflect the actual number of buyers, and merchants will increase sales through low-priced, multi item sales. For example, if the customer originally needs to pay 10 yuan, but the merchant sets the unit price of the product to 1 yuan, the customer needs to purchase 10 pieces, and sales naturally skyrocket.
How do promotion agencies help bank employees achieve their targets? After communicating with multiple promotion agencies, the reporter found that although the prices and channels of indicator sales vary, the process is basically the same. On various online shopping platforms, indicator products will be priced, but they are usually at an inflated price. The buyer needs to communicate directly with the store's customer service, and only after clarifying the bank, required quantity, and completion time will the customer service update the real-time quotation. After paying the corresponding fees, customer service will complete it within the specified time and provide completion vouchers to the buyer.
Among them, the customer service quotation is mostly determined by multiple factors such as the difficulty of completing the indicators, time limit, region, and the nature of the bank.
"Account opening indicators are usually charged based on the level of difficulty," a shop owner, Ah Jin, told reporters. For example, opening a personal pension account is difficult, and each bank can only open it once, so the price is usually higher. However, services such as digital RMB registration and credit card account opening are relatively low in difficulty and price. The deposit hedging business is relatively special, and generally, the specific quotation will not be updated until the last week of the month.
The reporter noticed that currently, deposit indicators and personal pension indicators are hot selling products for various promotion online stores, and prices also fluctuate significantly.
From the perspective of deposit indicators, according to Ah Jin, the price of funds at the end of July has experienced a correction compared to the end of June. Currently, Dahang charges a handling fee of 400 to 600 yuan for every 1 million yuan of impulse deposits, while this price can reach over 1000 yuan at the end of last month. Some local banks require offline account opening, so the quoted price is higher, and a transaction fee of up to 2000 yuan is required to deposit 1 million yuan.
The price of individual pension account indicators is constantly rising. "Previously, it was 80 yuan per household, but recently if we want to do it, it has basically doubled, with a price of 150 yuan per household, and we need to make an appointment in advance." Another promotional shop owner told reporters that due to the small group of people willing to register for personal pension accounts, the cancellation process after registration is relatively cumbersome, so there are fewer willing to take orders.
Many promotional shop owners emphasize that these indicators are all handled by real people. Ajin told reporters that they have offline promotion channels across the country, which can be promoted through setting up stalls, giving gifts, and other means. Online, the store also operates multiple dispatch groups simultaneously, with dedicated personnel completing various indicator tasks in real-time.
Many industry insiders have told reporters that this type of online shopping store has formed a relatively complete grey industry chain. They are familiar with the indicator rules and demand time points of various banks, and have accumulated a large customer base for agency services. Under the pretext of "promotion", they illegally engage in various bank indicator agency services.
Under the heavy pressure of assessment, bank personnel are forced to make online purchases
The promotion of the above indicators and the rise of agency models are related to the current strict performance reward and punishment mechanism of banks.
Every few days until the end of the month, Wu Zhuo would write down his progress in completing today's performance indicators in a notebook before leaving work, which is also one of his ways to alleviate anxiety.
Wu Zhuo is a teller at a local city commercial bank. Although there are only four tellers at the branch, they still have a strict performance competition system. "Generally, the first two will be rewarded and the last two will be punished. For example, for a certain indicator, the first place will be rewarded with 500 yuan per month, the second place will be rewarded with 300 yuan, the third place will be deducted with 300 yuan, and the fourth place will be deducted with 500 yuan." According to Wu Zhuo's calculation, perhaps only the difference in the number of accounts opened is 2-3, and the actual income of different tellers can differ by 1000 yuan.
Although online shopping indicators are expensive, they provide banks with a way to avoid punishment or impact rewards in the short term. "Being able to calculate accounts" has become a direct reason for many bank employees' online shopping indicators.
According to Lingling, during the performance sprint in the second quarter of last year, she was deducted 1000 yuan due to her credit card ranking third to last in terms of new performance, and 1000 yuan was deducted for products such as insurance and funds that did not break zero, totaling 2000 yuan.
Online shopping indicators can help her avoid punishment to the greatest extent possible. Once, with only 3 days left until the end of the assessment, Lingling's deposit and pension account opening targets have not been completed yet. She anxiously inquired about 4-5 promotional stores on a certain online shopping platform, and ultimately chose the cheapest one. The deposit and pension account opening quota agency cost a total of 680 yuan. "If there were no purchase targets at that time. Based on my original performance, I might have to deduct 1500 yuan or even more," she recalled afterwards.
It is worth noting that some industry analysts believe that such online shopping indicators essentially belong to seeking third-party promotion platforms to attract customers, which is a violation of regulations. According to Article 25 of the Measures for the Administration of Consumer Rights Protection of Banking and Insurance Institutions, banks shall not allow third-party cooperative institutions to promote or sell products and services to consumers in the name of the bank on self operated online platforms.
In addition, the model of bank employees using online shopping indicators to complete KPI assessments will also have an impact on consumer information security, bank customer quality, and other aspects.
Article 13 of the Measures stipulates that banks shall establish a consumer personal information protection mechanism to effectively safeguard the security of consumer personal information. Lou Feipeng, a researcher at Postal Savings Bank of China, stated that third-party push personnel lack effective mechanisms to ensure customer information security, and banks also lack effective management methods, making it difficult to effectively ensure consumer information security.
Dong Ximiao, a researcher at the Financial Research Institute of Fudan University, previously stated that the quality of customers obtained through this method is often relatively poor, because customers who are simply brought in through prizes and ground promotions often have a considerable gap from the real customers of the bank, which can also lead to some problems in subsequent business development. For example, in the field of personal pension accounts, there is a situation where "more accounts are opened and less investment is made". The actual number of accounts opened exceeds 30 million, but the actual investment is only about one-third, so the quality of customers is relatively poor
The regulatory authorities are also continuously monitoring the above situation. According to the administrative penalty information released on the official website of the State Administration for Financial Supervision and Administration, Zhejiang Pujiang Rural Commercial Bank has recently been fined a total of 1.6 million yuan for its unreasonable performance evaluation, which resulted in some grassroots branch deposits being "delayed" and other behaviors; The former Guangxi Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau previously issued a document urging banks to make employee violations and intermediary cooperation a key annual task for investigation, improve mechanisms and optimize processes in performance evaluation, loan "three inspections", employee management, and third-party cooperation, and resolutely eliminate "indicator based" and extensive development.
