The staff of Shaanxi Branch of Postal Savings Bank provided credit to villagers through the mobile exhibition industry. According to the data of the bank’s third quarterly report in 2022, in terms of artificial intelligence, the image recognition function of "postal brain" is applied to new scenes such as photovoltaic loans and postal loans, with an average daily image recognition volume of more than 416,700. Photo by Lei Kangfei (Zhongjing Vision)
Report to the 20th CPC National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed to accelerate the development of digital economy, promote the deep integration of digital economy and real economy, and build a digital industrial cluster with international competitiveness. As an important part of the digital economy, the importance of digital finance has become increasingly prominent, and it has been paid more and more attention by the industry. Recently, a number of financial institutions have issued "digital transformation programs" to better promote the integration of technology and financial services.
Many insiders said that the development of digital finance should focus on three key areas. First, consolidate the construction of digital infrastructure and pay attention to data value, data industrialization and industrial dataization; The second is to inject digital thinking into the whole process of financial services and continue to expand the application scenarios of digital finance; The third is to coordinate innovation and development and data security, and strengthen the prevention and resolution of related risks.
Digital infrastructure needs to be consolidated
"With the rapid development of the digital economy, the construction of digital infrastructure is continuing to heat up. At present, it has gradually developed from one-way empowerment support to comprehensive integration and development of modern infrastructure systems." At the recent annual meeting of the 2022 Financial Street Forum, the guests held that the construction of digital infrastructure is of great significance for promoting the development of digital economy, and relevant technological innovations should be continuously consolidated and improved.
What is digital infrastructure construction? "It takes computing power as the core and integrates computing power production, transmission and service. It is a new type of productivity in the digital economy era." Chang Dongdong, deputy director of the Operation Data Center of China Construction Bank, said that next, efforts should be made to build a new computing infrastructure.
At present, China’s computing infrastructure has reached the world leading level. Among them, the national integrated big data center system was basically built, and the implementation of the "East Counting and West Counting" project was accelerated. By June 2022, the total size of data center racks in China exceeded 5.9 million standard racks, and 153 national green data centers were built.
In view of the financial field, the core link is the construction of financial information infrastructure. Many insiders said that the next step is to build a scientific, safe and reliable financial information infrastructure and build a "digital base" for financial transformation and innovation.
"Infrastructure construction is highly valued in the securities and futures industry." Xiao Gang, chief information officer of China Securities, said that the 14th Five-Year Plan for Science and Technology Development of Securities and Futures Industry put forward the requirement of "integrating cloud, network, warehouse and chain". The first is to build an industry cloud platform. At present, we are vigorously developing the construction of general cloud products and services to provide independent, controllable, safe and efficient digital cloud services for the industry; The second is to promote the construction and upgrading of the securities network and do a good job of interconnection between institutions; The third is to build a centralized and unified big data warehouse in the industry; The fourth is to build a layered, unified, interconnected, safe and reliable industry blockchain public infrastructure.
There are two key points in promoting the construction of financial information infrastructure. On the one hand, focus on the value of data. "As a brand-new and key production factor, data will chemically react with traditional key production factors such as land, capital, manpower and technology, triggering a series of changes." Zhao Yundong, chief engineer of the R&D Center of Agricultural Bank of China, said that the data element itself contains great value.
"We should take data as the cornerstone and take the deep mining and application of data as the core competitiveness of digital transformation." Ma Long, deputy general manager of the Information Technology Department of Bank of China, believes that it is necessary to reshape the data governance structure, establish an enterprise-level data model, build an integrated data analysis and application platform, and break through the data barriers to form an aggregation effect of full sharing, flexible application and efficient processing of internal and external data.
On the other hand, it focuses on the trend of digital industrialization and industrial digitalization. "Represented by big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, mobile cloud platform and blockchain, technological development is continuously promoting the upgrading of IT infrastructure." Zhao Yundong said that based on these new infrastructures, financial services can better benefit people’s lives and serve the real economy, and finally realize the integrated development and virtuous circle of "IT+ industry".
Financial services inject digital thinking.
The trend of digital industrialization and industrial digitalization is providing a broad space for digital finance to empower the real economy. One of the effective paths is to inject digital elements into the whole process of financial services and continuously broaden the application scenarios of digital finance. The Financial Science and Technology Development Plan (2022-2025) issued by the People’s Bank of China clearly puts forward that it is necessary to deepen the financial application of digital technology, improve the system and mechanism of applying scientific and technological achievements with equal emphasis on safety and efficiency, continuously expand the industrial ecology of open innovation and win-win cooperation, and get through the "last mile" of the transformation of scientific and technological achievements.
At present, digital finance has made positive progress in serving government informationization, rural revitalization and personal finance. Relevant persons in charge of a number of commercial banks said that as a pillar industry of the tertiary industry, the banking industry has great potential in the digital economy era. On the one hand, it is necessary to empower traditional financial services with new technologies; On the other hand, we should rely on "technology+scenario" to become an integrator of customer flow, capital flow and information logistics, and promote the digital transformation of traditional industries.
"Promoting the informationization of government affairs is an important measure to improve the government’s management efficiency and service level and continuously enhance the people’s sense of happiness." The relevant person in charge of China Industrial and Commercial Bank said that, for this reason, the bank took the initiative to connect with government agencies at all levels to meet the needs of upgrading digital services in the fields of financial fund payment, prepaid supervision, social security and medical insurance. At present, Zhejiang Jiaxing Branch of ICBC has launched the "ICBC e-government" financial service platform for financial departments and budget units at all levels, which integrates fund deposit and management, revenue and expenditure management and dynamic monitoring of funds. In addition to the original basic functions such as corporate online banking, the platform can also provide budget units with services such as smart payment, smart payment and smart deposit, as well as cloud services such as cloud office, cloud manpower and cloud travel.
In the process of rural revitalization and modernization of agriculture and rural areas, many agriculture-related scenes are closely related to financial services. "Local governments have detailed management needs in the field of agricultural production custody, and the Agricultural Bank has recently launched the’ Agricultural Production Custody Service System’." According to the relevant person in charge of the Agricultural Bank, the so-called agricultural production trusteeship is a mode of agricultural operation. Family farms, farmers and other agricultural business entities entrust all or part of the operation links such as ploughing, planting, prevention and harvesting in agricultural production to agricultural service organizations without transferring land management rights. At present, "agricultural production trusteeship service system" can provide financial services for local governments, farmers and agricultural service organizations. Specifically, local governments can manage agricultural service organizations online through web pages; Farmers can browse agricultural service organization information online, inquire about subsidy prices and find local agricultural production custody services through the "Agricultural Bank Smart Agricultural Service Platform" WeChat applet; Agricultural service organizations can complete online operations such as order confirmation, service contract generation and service voucher uploading.
At present, mobile banking has become an innovative exploration platform for digital finance. "Mobile banking can give full play to the role of’ data-driven+algorithm control’, enhance data value and optimize financial services." Zhao Yundong said that taking the most common "self-registration" scenario as an example, through data collection and model analysis, the bank found that the reason for the loss of some users was that "the same mobile phone number could not be registered repeatedly". For this reason, the Agricultural Bank implemented more than 80 technical optimizations, which ultimately greatly improved the success rate of self-registration.
Both innovation and development and data security
It should be noted that deep application should be used with caution. To develop digital finance, we should coordinate innovation, development and security, and prevent and resolve financial technology risks. The Development Plan of Financial Science and Technology (2022-2025) clearly proposes to comprehensively strengthen data capacity building, promote orderly data sharing and comprehensive application on the premise of ensuring security and privacy, and strengthen prudent supervision of financial science and technology.
At present, the development of digital finance in China faces some shortcomings. For example, individual financial institutions have risks such as strategic mistakes in technical routes, weak IT governance, and excessive dependence on third-party institutions, which may endanger the safe and stable operation of financial institutions themselves. For another example, the independent research and development ability of digital finance needs to be improved, the basic data governance ability needs to be strengthened, and the information technology management and control ability cannot fully match the development level of information technology.
Among them, data security issues have attracted much attention. "Financial institutions should be explorers of data value, but also guardians of data compliance and data security." Li Rudong, President of baixin bank, said that in recent years, the regulatory authorities have issued a number of guiding opinions, emphasizing the protection of personal information security. The introduction of these policies has laid a solid foundation for guiding financial institutions to use data in compliance with the law and pointed out the direction.
"New technologies and new models are profoundly changing the generation, manifestation and transmission path of financial risks, and constantly putting forward new requirements and even challenges to financial institutions and regulatory authorities." Xiao Yuanqi, Vice Chairman of China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, China, said at the "Hong Kong Financial Technology Week 2022" that the financial industry and financial regulatory authorities should balance innovation and risk, not only support and encourage the financial industry to explore and apply new technologies, but also ensure that financial innovation always runs on a safe and prudent track.
Specifically, the first is to improve the rule-based supervision. Adhere to the principle of "financial business must be licensed", bring all financial activities into financial supervision, continuously improve and revise the existing financial supervision regulations, and formulate and issue special prudential supervision rules in time for emerging financial technology activities. The second is to enrich financial technology supervision tools. In terms of regulatory technology, we will continue to promote the construction of a digital system for on-site inspection and off-site monitoring; In terms of compliance technology, financial institutions are encouraged to actively explore the construction of a digital platform and strengthen effective control over compliance risks. The third is to strengthen consumer protection. "Although technology is widely regarded as neutral and does not have financial risk attributes, in practice, technology is easily intertwined with some improper financial behaviors and becomes a tool for fraud, money laundering and other activities." Xiao Yuanqi said that for this reason, in the process of financial technology development, it is equally important to strengthen the rights and interests of financial consumers, data security protection and information disclosure. (Economic Daily reporter Zi-yuan Guo)
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