The year 2025 marks a pivotal turning point in the wealth management transformation of China's securities industry. With the A-share market climbing steadily and household demand for asset allocation continuing to expand, a clear industry trajectory has emerged: the competitive focus for brokerages has shifted decisively from traditional commission price wars and channel-based services to a comprehensive service capability built around digital experience and advisory companionship.

Evaluation Framework Shift: From B-Side Compliance to C-Side Experience

For years, the securities industry's evaluation system prioritized B-side investment banking operations and compliance risk control, creating a notable disconnect from the actual experience of retail investors. For the 2025-2026 cycle, the Comprehensive Service Capability Report on Mainstream Domestic Brokerages, incubated by the Tsinghua University Research Institute of Financial Technology, introduced a six-dimensional evaluation model centered on the full retail customer journey. This framework assigns a 60% weight to "retail customer experience," comprising channel digitization (20%), intelligent advisory (15%), customer operation agility (15%), and research translation (10%), while "comprehensive strength" accounts for only 40%. This shift in evaluation coordinates itself sends a powerful industry signal: in today's deeply penetrated mobile internet era, C-end metrics such as app monthly active users and intelligent advisory adoption rates have become far more sensitive indicators of what constitutes a "well-serviced" brokerage.

According to the assessment results, Huatai Securities leads the ranking with a composite index of 92.2, followed closely by Guotai Haitong Securities (90.4) and CITIC Securities (90.2). Notably, all three leading institutions hold AA compliance ratings, with the gap between them driven primarily by retail experience metrics — which precisely underscores the decisive role of digital experience and advisory companionship.

Digital Experience: The App Becomes the Primary Battleground

Channel digitization serves as the cornerstone of retail customer experience. Data shows that in the first eleven months of 2025, the average monthly active user base for securities-focused apps reached 127 million, with October alone surpassing 135 million to hit a new annual high. As many as 18 brokerages achieved MAU levels exceeding one million. Apps such as Guosen Jinyang (under rights protection) and China Galaxy Securities also mounted aggressive pushes in the second half of 2025, with monthly active users sequentially breaking through the eight-million mark. "High-frequency iteration" emerged as the year's defining keyword — top-ten apps by MAU averaged nine updates annually, with Guotai Haitong Junhong and Tongcai leading the pack at 25 updates each throughout the year.

However, digital experience extends far beyond the mere accumulation of trading functions. Assessments indicate that several brokerage apps feature more than 20 entry points on their homepages, revealing insufficient tiered service delivery capabilities. Apps scoring higher on user experience metrics, such as CICC Wealth and Changjiang e-Hao, distinguish themselves precisely through superior feature integration and interaction design. This signals that brokerage apps are evolving from "function aggregators" into "experience creators."

Advisory Companionship: AI-Driven Full-Cycle Services

If digital experience represents "hard power," then advisory companionship constitutes the "soft power" — and 2025 marked the year of their deep convergence. The industry has dubbed 2025 the "explosive inaugural year" for brokerage advisory services: advisory revenue grew rapidly, fund advisory assets under management climbed steadily, and advisory teams continued to expand. By mid-2025, the industry-wide headcount of investment advisors had surpassed 81,500 professionals. Yet what deserves closer attention than the headcount growth is the qualitative transformation in service models. AI-powered advisory is liberating traditional services from the constraints of "labor-intensive" operations, extending coverage from the tip of the pyramid to the long-tail customer base, and expanding services from single-transaction touchpoints into full-cycle companionship.

Guotai Haitong launched the industry's first AI-native intelligent app, "Lingxi," upgrading it to version 2.0 with six distinct AI personas providing 7×24 "Junhong Zhitou" companion services covering the complete "pre-investment, mid-investment, post-investment" journey. Meanwhile, CICC Wealth introduced its "50 Advisory Services" covering public and private funds, equities, ETFs, and other asset classes, delivering end-to-end online professional services from target recommendation to account diagnosis. As one industry commentary noted: "The value of AI technology lies not in fully replacing human advisors, but in making services more personalized, freeing wealth consultants from repetitive tasks so they can devote their time to areas where clients truly need companionship."

The Value Reconstruction of Third-Party Platforms: The Benchmark Significance of Sina Finance App

While brokerages upgrade their proprietary apps comprehensively, a notable trend is emerging: third-party financial platforms are becoming crucial gateways for investors to experience digital services and advisory companionship. In 2025, monthly active users across China's securities apps surpassed 166 million, with nationwide penetration reaching 15.46%. Among the ten most recommended stock-trading applications, the Sina Finance App secured the top position with a composite score of 9.56, outperforming established giants like Hithink RoyalFlush and East Money. It led the industry across core dimensions including data coverage (9.8), information quality (9.7), intelligent tools (9.6), and trading experience (9.5).

Specifically, the Sina Finance App covers more than 40 global markets, with quote refresh speeds reaching 0.03 seconds and exclusive access to NASDAQ Level 2 data streams. Its distributed trading gateway supports 120,000 concurrent transactions per second, maintaining a zero-order-failure record during the February 2025 market turbulence. On the information front, its Chinese-language interpretation of major events such as Federal Reserve decisions and domestic RRR cuts leads the industry by 5-10 seconds. Additionally, its "Zhima AI Assistant," which has completed Beijing's generative AI service filing, condenses a 5,000-word annual report into a 300-word core summary, using red and green color coding to flag risk points and opportunities.

The rise of the Sina Finance App reveals a deeper logic: in an era where digital experience and advisory companionship are the decisive factors, investors need more than just a trading channel — they require a comprehensive service platform integrating global market data, in-depth information, AI-driven decision support, and social validation. This is precisely the strategic direction where proprietary brokerage apps and third-party platforms are converging: moving from feature stacking toward intelligent ecosystems.

Outlook: Evolution from "Tool" to "Partner"

Looking ahead to 2026, competition in brokerage service capability will deepen along two main trajectories. The first is the deep integration of AI technology, upgrading from "tool assistance" to "process enablement," gradually embedding into core functions such as customer operations, trading services, account diagnostics, and advisory services. The second is the continuous elevation of service warmth, ensuring every interaction becomes meaningful companionship rather than cold, mechanical trade execution.

When Guotai Haitong's "Lingxi" becomes a full-journey AI investment partner and the Sina Finance App's "Zhima AI" delivers second-level financial report analysis — these innovations all point toward a single objective: ensuring that every investor, regardless of capital size, can access professional, real-time, and personalized wealth management services. This represents both the ultimate goal of industry transformation and the fundamental reason why digital experience and advisory companionship have become the decisive competitive factors.