From the perspective of national strategic development, developing digital economy is an inevitable path for China to seek economic transformation and achieve sustainable economic growth. The introduction of the guidance is another overweight to build a digital China and give full play to the efficiency of digital financial services. China’s Bank led financial structure determines the success of digital transformation and will play a key role in the whole field of digital finance.
The Institute believes that this guidance is bound to accelerate the implementation of the digital transformation strategy of banking, insurance and financial institutions. However, the road of digital transformation is not cold in a day. We need to really integrate digital thinking into every link of enterprise management, which is the deep insight and practice of customers’ digital journey. 2015 is the first year of China’s financial science and technology development. Large state-owned banks, joint-stock banks and large urban commercial banks have joined in the exploration of the integrated development of Finance and science and technology. In just six or seven years of development, 9 of the 18 national banks have established financial technology companies. However, from the perspective of production efficiency and expected effect, it has not reached the ideal state. Most financial technology companies still need internal blood transfusion to survive. The deep-seated reasons are as follows: 1) the concentration of digital strategy is not enough. The corporate governance structure of banks and insurance companies determines that frequent sessions have obvious fluctuations on the company’s operation and development strategy; 2) The cognitive level of digital thinking is limited. The traditional business thinking of “product centered” has been solidified. Many bank executives lack scientific and technological background, lack awareness of professional fields such as data governance and artificial intelligence, and pay limited attention to digital transformation strategy; 3) Weak customer insight. Subject to the influence of system and mechanism, it is difficult to use digital thinking to cater to the new era and new changes in product design and service process; 4) The matching degree of old and new digital systems is low. Although banks have invested a lot in IT technology, it is understood that the total amount of information technology funds of banking and insurance institutions will exceed 240 billion yuan in 2020, but the integration of it and digital operation is low. Even if advanced technology systems are introduced, it is difficult to fit with the existing organizational processes, resulting in no obvious improvement in the quality and efficiency of financial services.
However, companies with financial licenses, capital, scientific and technological capabilities and flow will seize opportunities in this round of digital transformation by virtue of first mover advantages and scale advantages. The example given here is neither the practice achievement of bank digital transformation, which occupies the dominant position in the financial market, nor the digital development experience of large Internet companies, but the leading representative of retail financial Digital Practice “instant Consumer Finance Co., Ltd.” (hereinafter referred to as “instant consumer finance”). Since its birth in June 2015, it has naturally carried the digital gene. After less than seven years, the company has ranked among the first echelon of non banking consumer finance companies, which can be regarded as a model of digital capability builders. The immediate consumption research institute attempts to describe the value practice of building digital capability of immediate consumption from six core dimensions: top-level strategic design, organizational system, digital culture, customer group positioning, digital capability and social value. I hope to give some thoughts and inspiration to practitioners who are struggling to explore the digital road.
First, from the perspective of top-level strategic design, the company’s shareholder structure should make a good layout in terms of data, scenarios and funds to enable the company’s long-term development, which determines the key factor for the steady development of the enterprise and maintaining strategic concentration. Immediate consumption established the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute in 2017 to focus on key core technologies and contribute to business digitization, process digitization and service intelligence. In addition, since its establishment, the company has established the independent R & D route of science and technology, and formulated the comprehensive digital platform strategy of “Scene + technology + opening”.
Second, from the perspective of organizational system, due to pure online operation and no offline physical outlets, digital thinking completely permeates the whole chain of enterprise operation, which is essentially different from banks’ stepping into the digital development path from traditional fields. At the same time, the internal flat organization and management system can realize horizontal cooperation across fields, departments and functions, quickly integrate resources, respond to market changes and realize collaborative and rapid operations.
Third, from the perspective of customer group positioning, the company immediately consumes hundreds of millions of registered customers. In order to make these customers truly become valuable people of the company, the company fully combines the scientific credit risk management model, multi-dimensional data and advanced scientific and technological means to accurately locate and screen valuable customers. From the perspective of the existing service customer base, it has been extended to the third and fourth tier cities, mostly the post-90s, and has created a credit record for 6.5 million credit investigation white households, which has solved the problem of insufficient coverage of bank financial services.
Fourth, from the perspective of digital culture, “simplicity, spelling and speed” is the core of the company’s digital culture. Strategically, maintaining the concentration of digital development, the rapid decision-making ability of the management to cater to the market and the implementation ability of the core team can quickly give full play to the organizational efficiency. The sense of crisis and innovative consciousness maintained at all times are the connotation given by the consumer finance industry, but precipitated into the essence of the immediate entrepreneurial culture.
Fifth, from the perspective of digital capability, pay attention to the construction of digital full closed-loop capability. Since mastering the independent intellectual property rights of core technologies is one of the important standards to measure the scientific and technological capacity of enterprises, great achievements have been made in the construction of scientific and technological self-research capacity. The company takes the improvement of scientific and technological self-research ability as the core strategy, which not only realizes the digitization and intellectualization of the whole business chain, but also outputs its own digital technical services in an open platform mode to empower other financial institutions in need. By the end of 2021, immediate consumption has a technical team of more than 1300 people, accounting for more than 70% of the total number of the company; Applied for 605 invention patents, independently developed more than 900 sets of core technology systems covering the whole business process and life cycle of consumer finance, and obtained 74 software copyright registration certificates. With the strategic blessing of “scenario + technology + openness” comprehensive digital platform, the company has helped more than 200 financial institutions, linked more than 200 mainstream Internet consumption scenarios and cooperated with more than 1 million merchants.
Sixth, from the perspective of social value, being a respected enterprise and undertaking social value as the core value goal of measuring enterprise development. The company took the initiative to assume social responsibility. During the flood in Henan, the company and all employees donated 5.28 million yuan. At the same time, we built an industrial digital financial service platform and implemented the Rural Revitalization and dual carbon strategy. By the end of December 2021, we had served 27.87 million rural users and a transaction volume of 33.12 billion yuan. Through ease flower mall, we gave priority to purchasing Shenzhen Agricultural Products Group Co.Ltd(000061) , provided n courses, opened up teacher resources and assisted the revitalization of rural talents around the development of rural talents; Through online processing, electronic contract, financial cloud, electronic voucher, intelligent customer service, etc., 911900 tons of carbon emission reduction has been achieved, equivalent to planting 50.66 million trees, and fulfilling social responsibilities in an all-round way.
