Farmers also have significant wealth management needs, and the rural wealth management market deserves attention

In recent years, with the successive implementation and continuous introduction of various agricultural benefit policies in our country, farmers' incomes have continued to grow, and the demand for rural wealth management services has also continued to expand. However, farmers pay more attention to income growth while often neglecting the preservation and appreciation of income, and they pay insufficient attention to wealth management. Relevant statistics show that most farmers' wealth management methods are still based on traditional savings, of which 51.2% is bank savings and 36.4% is cash savings. The savings deposit amount of rural residents has also reached more than 2.2 trillion yuan. Faced with such a huge wealth management market, how farmers manage their finances and preserve and appreciate surplus funds has attracted widespread attention from society.

Solving this problem has important practical significance. On the contrary, if it remains unsolved for a long time, it will affect the improvement of farmers' incomes and the stability of the rural economy and society. This is because under the influence of interest rate fluctuations, excessively high bank savings have already caused "principal" to lose profit space, and nearly 40% of cash has not been absorbed by rural financial institutions. For the vast number of farmers lacking wealth management knowledge, some keep it as savings at home, some use it for private lending, and some even speculate in rural gambling. Either way, it either has no appreciation income due to falling interest rates, or carries great investment risk due to insufficient supervision, and ultimately causes economic losses to the vast number of farmers.

Objectively speaking, in recent years, personal wealth management business in rural areas has made considerable progress, but compared with the wealth management needs of the vast number of farmers, it is still far from sufficient. At present, rural personal wealth management business mainly remains limited to a small number of fund products, and there are still many problems to be solved in personal wealth management concepts and business development. For example, at present, personal wealth management products in rural areas of our country are mainly positioned for mid-to-high-end customers, with high minimum wealth management amounts, a high level of service specialization, and relatively similar product characteristics. For most farmers, it is difficult to reach this wealth management standard in the short term. In addition, farmers' incomes have strong cyclical and seasonal characteristics, making it difficult to meet the investment requirements of wealth management products. Not only that, modern bank wealth management products cannot be separated from the support of information technology. The promotion and processing of wealth management products rely on modern information technologies such as electronic banking, online banking, and wealth management software. However, factors such as poor rural infrastructure and low computer penetration make it difficult to promote a large number of wealth management products in rural areas, and the difficulty of developing the rural wealth management market remains relatively great.

The most important reason for the above situation is that in recent years, major domestic banks have continuously "grown distant" from rural areas, which has led to wealth management products being mainly targeted at urban people. Although some financial institutions have recognized the huge space in the rural wealth management market, they have not considered the reality that the proportion of high-income customers in rural areas is generally relatively low, and the threshold for wealth management product design is too high, resulting in scarce rural customers. Moreover, because farmers have not received timely popularization and education on investment and wealth management knowledge, even farmers who have become wealthy first do not quite understand how to use wealth management methods to make "money generate money."

In fact, launching wealth management products and realizing the preservation and appreciation of funds is a win-win for both banks and farmers. From the bank level, the active capital market has led to continuous diversion of savings, forcing banks to launch wealth management products with high yields to curb the downward trend in new savings. Therefore, it is also inevitable for banks to launch intermediary businesses such as wealth management products that do not occupy capital funds or credit scale. From the standpoint of farmers, farmers want to obtain returns, but investment channels are narrow, and farmers have a preference for risk avoidance. Therefore, low-risk, low-return government bonds and deposits, and high-risk, high-return stocks are not the optimal choices. Bank wealth management products, however, fall between the two, with the characteristics of relatively low risk and relatively high interest rates, finding a balance point for the diversification of farmers' personal investments and the increase of bank savings.

How can the development of rural wealth management products be advanced? From the perspective of financial institutions, they should establish and improve the personal wealth management business system in response to the current situation of the rural wealth management market. With provincial-level financial institutions as units, establish a management system for rural personal wealth management; organize specialized departments to investigate the rural personal wealth management market, and, in combination with the actual situation in rural areas, plan and formulate some wealth management products suitable for the rural market. In response to farmers' economic life and wealth management knowledge as well as the characteristics of strong seasonal income and expenditure and weak risk resistance, develop products that meet farmers' wealth management needs. While building the rural personal wealth management business system, focus on stimulating farmers' demand for wealth management, so that farmers truly realize the benefits brought by wealth management.

From the perspective of the development of wealth management products, full consideration should be given to urban-rural differences, and, in response to the economic, living, and financial knowledge levels of rural residents, develop financial wealth management products that meet farmers' actual needs, are psychologically easy to accept, and are simple and convenient to operate. For example, in response to issues such as education and elderly care that farmers currently care about, appropriately lower the access "threshold" for education savings products, and design investment and wealth management products specifically for farmers' elderly care, etc. For farmers with relatively high risk tolerance, increase efforts to handle wealth management products such as funds and insurance. For rural financial institutions whose wealth management business is still in its initial stage, they may as well place some emphasis on cultivating the wealth management market, including helping farmers understand financial knowledge, establish family asset files, formulate and demonstrate asset appreciation plans, and transmit various wealth management and investment information, so that the vast number of farmer friends can rationally choose investment methods.