Driven by strong performance in China's A-share market during August, brokerage app activity surged significantly. Data from QuestMobile shows that securities service applications reached 173 million monthly active users in August, representing a 4% month-over-month increase and 27.26% year-over-year growth, setting a new annual record. Among the TOP50 rankings, 35 were proprietary brokerage apps while 15 were third-party securities service applications.

Huatai Securities' Zhangle Wealth Management led with 11.83 million monthly active users, followed by Cathay Haitong Junhong, Ping An Securities, China Merchants Securities, and CITIC Securities' e-Invest in the top five positions. Among third-party applications, Tonghuashun maintained its leading position with over 30 million monthly active users, followed closely by East Money and Great Wisdom.

Daily active users, another key indicator reflecting user engagement, showed that the top ten brokerage apps all exceeded the 2 million threshold. Huatai Securities, Ping An Securities, and GF Securities continued to lead the industry's top three positions in daily active users, maintaining a stable competitive landscape. Notably, these three brokerages have consistently occupied the top three positions in daily active users from January to August, with only minor ranking changes among the top ten participants.

**Cathay Haitong Junhong Breaks Ten Million Monthly Active Users for First Time This Year**

According to QuestMobile data on securities app activity, the total active user count for securities apps reached 1.329 billion in the first eight months of this year, with August's monthly active users hitting 173 million, refreshing the annual record.

Against the backdrop of overall industry activity improvement, competition among brokerages intensified, though the first-tier brokerage app lineup and rankings remained stable. The top 10 monthly active brokerage apps maintained consistency with the previous month: Huatai Securities Zhangle Wealth Management (11.83 million), Cathay Haitong Junhong (10.21 million), Ping An Securities (8.73 million), CITIC Securities e-Invest (7.30 million), Cathay Haitong Wealth (7.24 million), CSC Financial Dragonfly (7.24 million), and GF Securities Easy Gold (7.11 million).

Notably, Cathay Haitong Junhong app achieved ten million monthly active users for the first time this year. The company has undertaken continuous initiatives to boost app activity, launching its first "818 Wealth Management Festival" on August 1st (lasting until September 8th), creating the securities industry's first "AI Investment Carnival" through online and offline integration. The company also continued promoting its newly launched AI-powered app "Cathay Haitong Spirit" introduced in July, built on the Junhong Spirit large language model with a 1+N application architecture centered on AI.

**Small and Mid-sized Brokerages Show Significant Activity Growth**

In terms of growth rates, all TOP50 applications showed varying degrees of monthly active user increases. Thirty-three brokerages achieved year-over-year growth rates above 20%, while five recorded month-over-month growth exceeding 5%. Small and mid-sized brokerages performed particularly well.

Industrial Securities' Youli Bao led with a 49.91% year-over-year growth rate in monthly active users, followed closely by Orient Securities' Orient Winner with 44.78% growth. Additionally, several other small and mid-sized brokerage apps, including Haitong Securities' Haitong Gold Explorer and Guoyuan Securities' Guoyuan Gold Touch, also achieved strong growth rates and entered the top ten.

While major brokerages like China Merchants Securities and Huatai Securities maintain larger user bases, small and mid-sized brokerages demonstrated greater vitality in monthly active user growth, showing strong momentum.

**Huatai, Ping An, and GF Securities Maintain Top Three Daily Active Users for Eight Consecutive Months**

According to QuestMobile's August securities app daily active user TOP10 rankings, positions remained unchanged from July. Analysis of the first eight months' daily active user data reveals that industry rankings have remained generally stable, with Huatai Securities, Ping An Securities, and GF Securities consistently occupying the top three positions.

August daily active user performance showed significant head effects with prominent leading advantages. Huatai Securities' "Zhangle Wealth Management" ranked first with 4.14 million daily active users, maintaining a commanding lead. Ping An Securities and GF Securities Easy Gold formed the second tier with 3.35 million and 3.26 million daily active users respectively.

Notably, all TOP10 apps experienced month-over-month declines in daily active users this month, with Cathay Haitong Wealth declining 3.99%. This reflects challenges most brokerage apps face with declining user activity, requiring active responses through function optimization, service improvements, and precise user operations to halt declining trends and strengthen market competitiveness.

**Third-party App Concentration Increases, Tonghuashun Maintains Leadership**

Third-party securities app monthly active users continued climbing, with industry leadership structure remaining stable. Tonghuashun maintained its leading position with 36.73 million monthly active users, followed by East Money (17.90 million) and Great Wisdom (12.59 million) in second and third positions, forming an undisputed first tier.

Tonghuashun remains the only securities service application exceeding 30 million monthly active users, maintaining its top position with nearly double East Money's user base.

From user scale and market structure perspectives, the current securities service app market exhibits distinct differentiation characteristics. While leading proprietary brokerage apps maintain steady growth in monthly active users, their user volumes still lag significantly behind top third-party securities service apps. Meanwhile, third-party securities service apps show increased traffic concentration, particularly within the top tier, forming a distinct "tiered" competitive landscape.

**Actively Embracing AIGC, Companion Investment Advisory Becomes Mainstream**

In the second half of 2024, multiple brokerages accelerated AI technology implementation in mobile platforms and investment advisory services, launching various intelligent functions and services.

Guojin Securities officially launched its "AI Investment Advisory" series, covering stock unwinding, fund recovery, stock and fund selection, and portfolio optimization. Based on investors' historical trading preferences and habits, the service provides highly targeted recommendations, achieving personalized investment advisory assistance.

Soochow Securities introduced the anthropomorphic service agent "AI Water Drop" in its "Xiucai APP," supporting multi-round conversations and covering 13 dimensions of "AI Portfolio View" functionality, generating personalized portfolio daily reports and investment recommendations.

GF Securities built its "Tianji Smart Finance" model service, integrating RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) and Agent orchestration technologies. RAG technology enables the model to access both its knowledge base and real-time financial information when responding to user needs, ensuring output timeliness. Agent orchestration technology can decompose complex tasks and achieve multi-task coordination, providing comprehensive collaborative recommendations in investment decision scenarios.

Industry experts note that AIGC represents an AI empowerment technology that can broadly serve various content-related scenarios through its content production advantages, creating synergies with wealth management. AIGC is expected to empower brokerage wealth management in three areas: enhancing investment advisory services through precise customer needs assessment and product optimization; enabling precision marketing through customer profiling and personalized services; and improving operational efficiency through integrated management systems and enhanced service effectiveness.