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On August 14, Qifu Technology (03660.HK) suddenly issued an announcement that 360 Group founder and chairman Zhou Hongyi resigned as director and chairman of Qifu Technology due to personal reasons.

The end point of all business models is finance. Zhou Hongyi, who was once known as the "godfather of online lending", founded 360 Finance (the predecessor of Qifu Technology), which became the most important profit cow of 360 and made Zhou Hongyi rich.

Data shows that in the five and a half years since its listing in the United States (2019 to the first half of 2024), Qi Fu Technology has achieved a total net profit attributable to shareholders of more than 22.5 billion yuan.

In comparison, Zhou Hongyi's other listed company, 360 (601360.SH), has suffered a total loss of more than 2.9 billion in the past two and a half years.

To the surprise of investors, after Zhou Hongyi resigned as chairman of the board, the leadership of QiFu Technology was not passed on to the CEO or other insiders of the company, but was passed on to independent director Zhao Fan.

Independent director takes over as chairman of the board

The announcement shows that the board of directors has approved the appointment of Zhao Fan as chairman of the board and approved the appointment of Liu Xiangge as an independent director of the board, effective from August 13, 2024.

Zhao Fan is an "outsider" of Qi Fu Technology. He has served as an independent director since last year, which is his only connection with the company.

According to his resume, Zhao Fan founded Beijing Maple Leaf Fanda Investment Consulting Co., Ltd. in 2000 and served as the company's chairman. He has served as a director of Beijing Haiziman Piano Co., Ltd. since 2004. He founded Sunbridge International Holdings Limited and served as the company's chairman from 2002 to 2018. Since January 2023, he has served as an independent director of Qifu Technology.

Zhou Hongyi's mysterious operation of "passing the throne" to an external independent director is just like the speculation of "disguised reduction of holdings" triggered by his divorce.

Why did Zhou Hongyi resign as chairman of the board of directors of this "money printing machine" company?

Industry insiders generally believe that this may be related to the independent operation of the fintech sector.

Zhou Hongyi is the founder, chairman and CEO of 360. Qifu Technology was formerly known as 360 Finance. It officially started independent operation in June 2018, went public in the United States in December of the same year, and went public in Hong Kong for the second time in November 2022.

Public information shows that QiFu Technology is an artificial intelligence-driven credit technology service platform that provides financial technology services through intelligent services, AI research and application, and security technology.

In the eyes of industry insiders, Qifu Technology's business model is similar to that of a "broker", which simply means earning interest and service fees by matching loans. Its main business focuses on two sectors: the first is credit services, such as on-balance sheet lending and off-balance sheet loan guarantees, which bear credit risks and require heavy capital operations; the second is platform services, which mainly provide partners with services such as traffic diversion, earn intermediary fees, and do not need to bear risks.

As of the end of the second quarter of 2024, QiFu Technology has established partnerships with 160 financial institutions, helping them provide credit services to more than 53 million small and micro enterprises and individual consumers.

Although it is engaged in finance-related business, 360 Finance changed its name twice after listing and no longer mentioned its financial business in public. Through the two name changes, it cut ties with finance and 360 successively.

On August 8, 2020, 360 Finance officially announced its brand upgrade and launched "360 Digital Technology" as its new brand.

On February 14, 2023, 360 Digital Technology announced that the company's brand was changed to QiFu Technology, and stated that it will fully focus on financial technology strategy to help financial institutions achieve digital transformation.

A person related to Qifu Technology told the media at that time: "Although the company's name comes from 360, the two parties have completely different business positioning and are independent of each other. 360 focuses on digital security, while Qifu Technology focuses on the financial technology service market, which can further highlight the company's determination to independently develop a financial technology strategy."

On August 2 this year, Qi Fu Technology announced that it would upgrade its core product "360 IOU" to "Qi Fu IOU" in a step-by-step manner.

Zhou Hongyi's resignation as chairman of QiFu Technology is clearly another big step forward on the road to brand and business independence.

Can the label of “Godfather of Online Loans” be removed?

Compared with the titles such as "Red Godfather" and "Security Godfather", Zhou Hongyi also has the title of "Online Lending Godfather" because he controls the "money printing machine" of Qifu Technology.

Information shows that Zhou Hongyi, as the ultimate controller of QiFu Technology, holds a 13.20% stake.

However, Zhou Hongyi resigned as the chairman of Qifu Technology. Obviously, the title of "Godfather of Online Lending" is not something he is nostalgic for. Because lending money always reminds people of "loan sharking".

Jintong News Agency noted that Zhou Hongyi is indeed a genius in online lending. 360 Group, founded in 2016, was ByteDance's largest credit client in 2017. In this process, its customer acquisition ability and efficiency also surpassed its peers. Often, when sales expenses were almost the same, Qifu Technology was far ahead in terms of customer acquisition quantity and quality.

On December 14, 2018, 360 Finance successfully landed on the Nasdaq in the United States and was listed. Zhou Hongyi, who once claimed that he "did not do finance", has quietly become one of the industry leaders.

Judging from its revenue and net profit since its listing, from 2019 to 2023, Qi Fu Technology's operating income was 9.2 billion yuan, 13.6 billion yuan, 16.64 billion yuan, 16.55 billion yuan, and 16.29 billion yuan respectively; the net profit attributable to the parent was 2.5 billion yuan, 3.5 billion yuan, 5.782 billion yuan, 4.024 billion yuan, and 4.285 billion yuan respectively.

In the first half of this year, Qi Fu Technology achieved a total net income of 8.313 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10.64%; net profit of 2.536 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.38%; and net profit attributable to the company's ordinary shareholders of 2.545 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.26%.

This means that in the five and a half years since its listing, Qi Fu Technology has achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB 22.5 billion.

By resigning as chairman of QiFu Technology, can Zhou Hongyi tear off the label of "Godfather of Online Lending"?

Since they actually got real money from Qi Fu Technology, it is obviously not something that can be torn away just because they want to.

Currently, Zhou Hongyi has a total of 4 listed companies. In addition to 360 (601360.SH) listed on the A-share market, QiFu Technology (03660.HK) listed on both the US and Hong Kong stock markets, there is also Master Lu (03601.HK) listed on the Hong Kong stock market and Huafang Group (03611.HK) listed on the Hong Kong stock market.

Among them, Master Lu is a system evaluation tool brand under Chengdu Qilu Technology Co., Ltd., which can provide users with hardware product and system evaluations, and provide monitoring for the operation of related products; Huafang Group focuses on the field of online social entertainment, and owns many domestic and foreign products such as Huajiao and Liujianfang.

After the divorce division and the dissolution and liquidation of the shareholding platform, the major shareholders of 360 with a shareholding of more than 5% have become Zhou Hongyi, Hu Huan (Zhou Hongyi's ex-wife), and Xin Xinsheng. The three hold 13.26%, 6.25% and 6.06% of the listed company's shares respectively.

According to the "2024 Hurun Global Rich List", Zhou Hongyi's wealth is 13.5 billion yuan.