The industry focuses on the digital transformation of banks: the elephant dances at the right time to leapfrog barriers and develop further

Source: People's Daily Original manuscript

People's Daily Beijing, October 25 (Reporter Li Tong) "Digital technology has become a 'hard support' for banking business innovation. "We must pay attention to the industry characteristics of the digital transformation of banks." At the "2021 Global Wealth Management Forum" held recently, the participants said that the digital transformation of the banking industry is gradually entering the deep water area, and it is necessary to embed digitalization into the internal logic of business operations, precipitate digital assets that belong to the symbiosis between banks and users, and realize the advanced development of banking services.

Yang Zaiping, former full-time vice president of the China Banking Association, said that the arrival of the digital wave has put forward new requirements for the development of the banking industry, and it is necessary to actively adapt to the new environment, meet new challenges and seize new opportunities. Specifically, he said, banking facilities should be iterative from electronic to digital, systems should be transitioned from closed to open, and business channels should be transformed from physical outlets to online platforms. In addition, the number and quality of personnel in banking institutions, internal governance structure, and brand culture should be optimized and reformed around digital development.

"Banking digitalization presents dynamic and multidimensional characteristics, in this context 'elephants also have to learn to dance', 'corner overtaking' opportunities have always existed." Cheng Hua, executive director of the Digital Economy Research Center of Chinese Min University, said that the digitalization of banks requires platform ecological thinking, which means that there are different division of labor systems and competitive relationships in business. Traditional banks have different branches, different business departments, and public-to-private windows, and more emphasis is placed on the front, middle and back office in the digital stage. Traditional banks mention that the industry emphasizes more competition, but under the platform thinking, it emphasizes cooperation. For example, cooperation in business standards, sharing of data, investor education, etc.

Yang Tao, deputy director of the National Finance and Development Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the digital transformation of banks should focus on the characteristics of their own business and highlight the orientation of technology application, which constitutes an important tool for the digital transformation of banking institutions; the customer demand driving path, which forces the digital transformation of banks to solve the pain points of customer needs; the policy grasp of supervision should better conform to the development direction of policies. He believes that the most important thing for banking reform is the human problem, but also to pay attention to the layout of soft and hard resources that match talents, improve the effect of digital transformation, and reduce the cost of reform.

"Digital transformation is by no means a simple technology application, its essence is an organizational change and management innovation, the key to success is not only financial technology itself, but also whether it can be integrated into the corporate culture gene." In terms of institutional mechanisms, work processes, service models, etc., we will build an agile organization that is deeply integrated with financial technology and adapts to the requirements of financial technology development. Hou Benqi, executive director of hengfeng bank digital bank research institute, said that hengfeng bank has clarified the timetable and roadmap for promoting digital transformation, focusing on digital transformation from development goals and institutional mechanisms to product innovation, organizational structure and business processes.