Fintech investment continues to increase - press the "fast-forward button" for the digital construction of banks
Fintech is an important driving force for the digital transformation of finance.
In recent years, financial management departments and financial institutions have made great efforts to solve the blocking points of fintech infrastructure, and digital transformation and upgrading have improved quality and efficiency.
However, in the face of fierce market competition, some small and medium-sized financial institutions are lagging behind in the development of digital construction, and it is urgent to take practical measures to speed up the level of digital construction.
Under the baptism of the wave of financial technology, where is the digital transformation of financial institutions?
How will small and medium financial institutions break through?
Efficient access to online services
In the first half of this year, the demand for "contactless" financial services accelerated significantly due to the spread of the new crown pneumonia epidemic.
Coupled with the widespread use of smartphones, financial services have broken through time, space and geographical restrictions, and traditional over-the-counter service scenarios such as transfer, remittance, investment and wealth management are gradually being replaced by online methods.
In particular, as the most direct and extensive financial APP to reach users, it has become an important channel for the industry to acquire customers, covering almost the mainstream business scope of various financial institutions.
On the road to digital transformation, financial institutions are scrambling to seize the commanding heights of this online service.
The reporter combed the recent semi-annual reports of listed banks and found that the financial technology strategy has been comprehensively promoted and developed in depth, achieving high efficiency and fast online access.
For example, China Construction Bank has deepened its platform operation, relying on the empowerment of digital technology and technology, and continuously optimized the "CCB Huimingyou" APP. According to data, the APP has accumulated over 170 million visits, over 22.5 million downloads, and over 1.65 million credit customers. households with a credit amount exceeding 1.3 trillion yuan.
In addition, ICBC will strengthen its own platform, build a main online customer service front, and accelerate innovation in services, scenarios, and operations.
As of the end of June this year, the number of personal mobile banking customers reached 488 million, and the monthly active users of mobile terminals exceeded 160 million, leading the industry in terms of customer scale and activity.
Dong Ximiao, chief researcher of China Merchants Union Finance, believes that large banks are accelerating and deepening digital transformation, continuously improving their level of digitalization, enhancing their compatibility with the digital economy, and enhancing their competitiveness in the post-epidemic era.
Strategically, based on their own business development and user needs, they should formulate an enterprise-level digital strategy, clarify the direction and focus of digital transformation, and enhance the firmness and flexibility of the strategy.
In terms of business, concepts such as Minimum Viable Product (MVP) should be used to accelerate product innovation and iteration, and enrich digital financial products; with mobile APP as the core, strengthen the integration of online and offline channels.
The consumer finance industry is also developing financial apps.
Based on the data of Analysys Qianfan, relevant institutions in the industry conducted a semi-annual comprehensive evaluation of the monthly active users, monthly launch times and product function experience of 20 APPs of 15 consumer finance companies. China Merchants Union Finance APP, Home Credit Consumer Finance APP, China Post Consumer Finance China Post Wallet APP, Ping An Consumer Finance APP, and Zhongyuan Consumer Finance APP are at the forefront.
"As the most important digital loan assistance window and customer acquisition portal for a consumer finance company, the operation level of the APP not only requires the support of capital and technology, but also reflects the core service capabilities of a consumer finance company. Comprehensive strength in products, brands, etc." said Wang Ruoxi, a senior researcher at Zero One Think Tank.
In the first half of 2022, the APP activity of half of the consumer gold companies has steadily increased, and the top consumer gold companies have more obvious advantages in the number of active users and the number of APP launches.
The relevant person in charge of the Immediate Consumer Research Institute said that it is foreseeable that under the background of online consumer finance business, consumer finance companies are paying more and more attention to their APP in acquiring new incremental customers, mining the value of existing users, and improving users. The role of experience.
From the perspective of the APP growth path of leading consumer finance companies, consumer finance APPs must actively expand their business scope, create various consumption scenarios, and continuously expand business boundaries, otherwise it will be difficult to support the expansion of consumer finance APPs in scenarios.
In addition, driven by financial technology, mobile payment services have developed rapidly, and the digital RMB APP has continued to deepen in market application and technological innovation.
Fan Yifei, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, said that in recent years, the People's Bank of China has carried out the pilot work of digital renminbi research and development, and is committed to building an open and inclusive financial infrastructure to provide basic support for the high-quality development of the digital economy.
The digital renminbi made a wonderful debut on the stage of the Beijing Winter Olympics. The newly upgraded digital renminbi APP was officially launched in major application markets, the software and hardware wallets were successfully implemented, and major progress was made in smart contracts, barrier-free and aging products, and multi-level products. The system is initially formed.
Improve the institutional standard framework
The digital transformation of the banking industry is not only a practical need to build a new development pattern of the banking industry and a new engine for high-quality development, but also a need to empower consumer experience and better support the development of the real economy.
How can financial institutions implement digital transformation?
It is particularly important to clarify the direction of transformation in terms of institutional norms and path guidance.
Since the beginning of this year, the People's Bank of China and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission have successively issued relevant regulations to strengthen the empowerment of financial technology and promote the digital and intelligent transformation of the banking industry.
For example, the "Financial Technology Development Plan (2022-2025)" issued by the People's Bank of China pointed out that the main line is to accelerate the digital transformation of financial institutions and strengthen the prudential supervision of financial technology, to inject digital elements into the whole process of financial services, and to focus on the technological drive of financial innovation. And data empowerment, to promote my country's financial technology from "pillars and beams" into a new stage of "accumulation and growth", and strive to achieve a leapfrog improvement in overall level and core competitiveness by 2025.
"This is a comprehensive deployment of financial technology development in the future, indicating the direction of development. Developing financial technology and accelerating digital empowerment are 'must-answers' for financial institutions in the digital economy era. For financial institutions, promoting the development of financial technology Not only need to reserve technology and talents, but also to hand in satisfactory answers in this 'big test', financial institutions must also break down the institutional barriers that restrict the development of financial technology." Dong Ximiao said.
With the deepening of the structural reform of the financial supply side, the construction of financial standardization has also ushered in an important period of opportunity.
The People's Bank of China, the State Administration for Market Regulation, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the China Securities Regulatory Commission jointly issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for Financial Standardization" (referred to as the "Plan"), putting forward new priorities for the digital transformation of the financial industry.
Experts believe that financial standardization work should more effectively adapt to the digital transformation and development of finance, play a fundamental and leading role in the digital age, and help create risk-controlled financial services in the digital age.
Financial standardization itself must also accelerate digital transformation and adapt to the development needs of the financial industry in a more agile and intelligent manner.
Financial standards are the general requirements for the digital transformation of financial institutions that require unified technologies and systems, and provide rules and guidelines for financial institutions' business activities.
The "Plan" proposes to speed up the implementation of correspondence data standards and promote the steady development of correspondence digitization.
Xing Wei, secretary of the Party Committee and full-time vice president of the China Banking Association, said that the China Banking Association will lead the construction of a blockchain service platform for bank correspondence, which will be released in December 2020.
The correspondence platform has changed from the traditional one-to-one manual offline handling to the full-process online circulation handling, realizing automated reply, the whole process of correspondence status can be tracked, and business efficiency has been greatly improved.
As of August 31, 2022, the platform has accumulated technical access to 44 banking financial institutions and 135 accounting firms; the average processing time for banks is 2 days and 10 hours, compared with 5 days to 15 days for traditional offline paper letters. Day business processing time, obvious advantages.
It is worth noting that with the blessing of Internet technology, support for financial technology innovation must have unified standards and norms.
As far as the digital renminbi is concerned, Fan Yifei said that in promoting the ecological construction of the digital renminbi, the acceptance environment and the expansion of application scenarios need to be broken, and the unification and specification of standards are the key.
The monetary system is the cornerstone of the market economy, and the unification of standards is particularly critical.
In a modern society where mobile payment is highly developed, it is even more necessary to break down the barriers between payment tools and improve the efficiency of fund management and consumer payment experience.
In the first half of this year, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued the "Guiding Opinions on the Digital Transformation of the Banking and Insurance Industry", emphasizing that banking and insurance institutions should strengthen top-level design and overall planning, scientifically formulate digital transformation strategies, and coordinate their progress.
Dong Ximiao believes that this is the first special document issued by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission for the digital transformation of the banking and insurance industries.
Combined with the "Plan", through a series of measures to strengthen top-level design and strengthen policy norms, the digital transformation of banking and insurance financial institutions will be promoted to a new stage of standardization, order and system.
Build a solid foundation to prevent risks
A few days ago, the "China Bankers Survey Report (2021)" jointly released by the China Banking Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers shows that promoting digital transformation has become the primary strategic focus of high-quality development of the banking industry for two consecutive years.
Specifically, the digital transformation of the banking industry presents some new features.
Xing Wei said that, on the one hand, the overall investment in financial technology continued to increase, and more than 70% of banks’ financial technology investment accounted for more than 2% of their operating income in the past three years.
In terms of types of banks, large banks and joint-stock banks have the highest investment in fintech, and rural commercial banks have the most obvious growth rate of investment in fintech.
On the other hand, the construction of fintech talents is obvious. Nearly 80% of the banks have fintech personnel accounting for more than 2% of the total number of employees. Most banks have introduced a large number of technical experts in key fields such as big data, blockchain, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.
Industry experts said that, in general, banks have "prepared enough food and grass" to test the waters of digital transformation, which is also an important starting point for financial institutions to increase market share and competition in the industry.
With the gradual integration of big data technology into banking business marketing, loan monitoring and other links, financial institutions implementing digital transformation should formulate long-term plans in advance that match their own technical strength and risk control.
At present, large and medium-sized banks and rural commercial banks have generally increased their investment in scientific and technological research and development, and some have adopted independent methods to promote digital operations. and other means to serve the digital transformation of the Bank.
In order to build a solid technical foundation for the transformation of the banking industry, financial institutions of different sizes optimize their organizational structures and work processes from within, thereby improving service efficiency and preventing risks in service and business models.
Dong Ximiao suggested that for large financial institutions, the organizational structure of the linear functional system should be optimized or even reconstructed, and a cross-departmental and cross-level technology and business collaboration organization should be built, so as to improve the iterative efficiency of financial product and service innovation, and increase the demand for the market and customers. speed of response.
Small and medium-sized financial institutions should take advantage of the characteristics of few institutional levels and short decision-making chains, promote the agile transformation of the whole organization, and enhance continuous innovation, rapid response, and strong execution.
However, the openness and interactivity of digitization itself make financial online businesses have potential risks and hidden dangers.
Dong Ximiao said that for the financial management department, it is necessary to further improve the relevant supporting rules, balance the relationship between financial innovation and prudential supervision, improve efficiency and prevent risks, and make full use of regulatory technology to improve the efficiency of digital transformation supervision.
In addition, to accelerate the digital transformation of the financial industry, it is necessary to maintain both "speed" and "warm" services.
At present, it should be noted that customer groups such as the elderly, the disabled, and ethnic minorities still face many problems in the process of using digital tools.
The relevant person in charge of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission stated that financial institutions should focus on the service scenarios and high-frequency matters involved in daily life, strengthen the construction of application software functions such as large-character version, voice version, national language version, and concise version, and enhance the support for areas without outlets and inaccessible outlets. The service coverage of customer groups improves the availability of financial products and services, provides more comprehensive, more intimate and more direct facilitation services, promotes the solution of the "digital divide" problem, and enhances people's sense of acquisition, happiness and security.
Reporter Wang Baohui Wang Baohui