Once upon a time, bank halls were always crowded. Chen Jun's childhood memories were that his grandfather always took him to the bank to run errands, and after the Spring Festival, he deposited the money into the passbook in the bank's business hall, waiting for the process of calling the number, and the action of passing the banknote into the counter window was even quite ceremonial. "Back then, everyone wanted to have a relative who worked in a bank."
After graduating from university, Chen Jun really came to work at China Construction Bank, and in the past few years, he has clearly felt that there are not as many people doing business in bank branches as before. Among the bank population, there is a professional term to describe this phenomenon - "exit rate", which refers to the rate of bank Internet business replacing offline counters.
As the wheel of history passed, as information technology became more and more widely used in the financial field, a small mobile banking APP undertook intensive financial activities that Chen Jun could not have imagined as a child, and transactions gradually changed from "trivial" to trivial.
The rate of de-counter is increasing year by year, and behind the convenient transaction and functional expansion is the exploration and progress of the banking industry in financial technology.
In 1999, China Construction Bank (hereinafter referred to as "CCB") opened an international Internet website, and in 2004, it began to provide customers with mobile banking services, and for more than 20 years, in line with the trend of online and scenario-based user behavior in the digital era, electronic service channels have accelerated expansion and innovation. In 2020, CCB piloted a new "CCB Life" APP, providing users with one-stop services for high-frequency life scenarios such as catering, takeaway, supermarkets, travel, recharge and payment, etc. CCB people used to call this orange icon application "Orange Storm".
In recent years, in the face of unprecedented changes in a century, the development of new science and technology represented by informatization, intelligence and digitalization has had a huge impact on all walks of life, including the financial industry. As a large state-owned commercial bank, CCB has stepped into the market to answer the questions of the times, actively explore the road of financial development with Chinese characteristics, strive to contribute financial strength to promote high-quality development, and strive to let hundreds of millions of people feel the temperature brought by finance.
"Now, I teach my grandfather to collect coupons for CCB life. Every time you buy vegetables and fruits, you can save some money, accumulate a little, grandpa smiled every time he placed an order. Chen Jun said.
The minutiae of financial penetration into personal life now seem to fly into ordinary people's homes, but this complementary relationship has never been achieved overnight, and behind a small innovation carries many changes. And every change of the times has created a new future for society.
1
The fireworks of a good life
The new era needs new finance, what is new finance?
Compared with traditional finance, the target group of new financial services is the broadest range of people. Tian Guoli, chairman of CCB, proposed that it is necessary to use the gentle scalpel of finance to solve social pain points and difficulties, and serve the majority of people, not just a few, in order to better serve the fundamental "way" of common prosperity with the "technology" of finance.
With the improvement of the epidemic prevention and control situation, people's lives have returned to normal, and dine-in restaurants in various places have gradually resumed. The fireworks of the world are the most soothing to mortals. Conveying the temperature of a better life and how to exert financial power has become a test topic in the banking industry. At the end of last year, the consumption season of "Meet Sanli and Vitality Renewal" was launched in Sanlitun, Beijing, and a variety of promotional activities helped the Internet celebrity business district to return to its former prosperity. CCB Beijing Branch relies on the "CCB Life" platform to promote the application of digital RMB and join hands with well-known merchants in business districts to benefit the people and release consumption vitality.
All over the country, CCB branches have also continued to carry out various activities to contribute to local consumption - Hubei Branch drove consumption of more than 629 million yuan during the Hubei Provincial Government's 2022 "Huibuyu Hubei" consumption coupon issuance activity; in order to improve the customer experience of large-value consumption coupons issued for car purchases, Shanxi Branch independently developed the "CCB Life" APP online registration and review platform to achieve online, paperless and contactless acceptance of the whole process; CCB also signed a framework agreement with the National Film Administration to promote movie-watching consumption, investing a total of RMB50 million to directly subsidize audiences to purchase tickets, and releasing 50,000 movie coupons every day through the "CCB Life" platform.
As the main platform to boost consumption, in order to support the high-quality and efficient development of various activities, CCB has spent a lot of effort to build a platform with wide coverage, strong functions and advanced operation mode in a short period of time - since the beginning of 2022, CCB has rapidly introduced about 350,000 high-quality merchant stores represented by large chains and word-of-mouth stores, providing users with convenient and diverse consumption choices, while CCB's life APP is equipped with robust back-end systems and operation capacity upgrades to support a variety of convenient payment forms.
According to public data, since the launch of the "CCB Life" platform, CCB has supported and assisted 228 cities to rely on "CCB Life" to carry out the issuance and use of government consumption coupons, and has undertaken the issuance of government consumption coupons by more than 3 billion yuan, driving about 10 billion yuan in consumer transactions, and promoting the vitality and improvement of the consumer market. In January this year alone, during the first New Year's Day and Spring Festival consumption golden period after the "epidemic dispersed in spring", the "CCB Life" platform added 2.84 million new registered users, with a transaction amount of 2.755 billion yuan, and undertook government consumption vouchers in 77 cities across the country amounted to 510 million yuan, driving the consumption transaction amount to 1.03 billion yuan.
Obviously, using platform thinking to run a bank has become a trend in the digital era. Whether it is mobile banking or the "CCB Life" platform, as a large-scale socialized platform that connects the supply and demand of people's livelihood consumption in the Internet era, provides digital operation and consumption guidance services, and has the ability to undertake digital infrastructure for social livelihood consumption in the future, it is an important link in CCB's new financial action to comprehensively serve people's new digital life and help build a better life for people.
Today, CCB has deeply linked financial and non-financial scenarios, and formed a "twin" service model between the "CCB Life" APP and mobile banking, opening the curtain on the new "CCB story" in the new era.
2
The public's dream of living in peace
New finance is destined to be for the masses. And the dream of living in peace is the light on the road of every struggling individual and family. CCB's close connection with hundreds of millions of people also starts with housing.
"If you want to buy a house, go to CCB", this advertising slogan was once a household name, CCB's development in the field of personal housing finance is at the same frequency as the reform and opening up and economic and social development. In 1985, CCB issued the first "mortgage loan" in Shenzhen. Thirty years ago, 72 young computer developers applied for the first batch of personal provident fund housing loans at CCB and successfully settled in Beijing, becoming a representative case that people still talk about.
In the new era, the state has repeatedly emphasized "adhering to the positioning that houses are for living, not for speculation, and accelerating the establishment of a housing system with multi-subject supply, multi-channel guarantee, and both rental and purchase", CCB resolutely implemented the national policy requirements of "housing without speculation" and "renting and purchasing", and determined housing leasing as a bank-wide strategy in 2017.
In order to promote the concept of "long-term residence means resettlement" and return housing to its original habitation, CCB has vigorously deployed housing leasing in many cities across the country in recent years. Fully support the construction of affordable rental housing, combine urban renewal, activate idle housing, build Jianrong apartments, urban village new homes, and allow new citizens to live in decent and comfortable new homes.
Different from traditional housing agencies, the housing leasing platform built by CCB is systematically developed by the head office to connect leasing parties such as property owners, tenants and professional leasing service agencies. Among them, the role of banks is to obtain long-term rental housing, formulate property service standards, build platforms, custody funds, and supporting financial services.
Today, CCB has gradually formed its own housing rental ecology. The housing rental platform basically covers the whole country, providing a sunny and transparent trading platform for tens of millions of landlords and tenants. In the future, CCB will actively integrate resources to jointly build industrial alliances and access external scenarios such as home, housekeeping, and communities. Carry out research on affordable housing public REITs (real estate investment trusts), accelerate the implementation of public REITs, broaden a variety of financing channels, and strive to make leasing a rope to strangle the "gray rhinoceros" in the real estate market.
At the end of last year, CCB continued to "explore the way" and initiated the establishment of the country's first housing leasing fund, fulfilling the dream of more people to live in peace and security, while also striving to explore the sustainable development of the housing rental market.
As a large state-owned bank with traditional advantages in the housing field, CCB has basically realized the brand change from "to buy a house, to CCB" to "to rent a house, to CCB". The practical experience of exploring housing leasing has also laid the foundation for CCB to better serve housing reform in the new era, and practiced the new financial concept of "contributing financial resources to the society and helping people build a better life and live and work in peace and contentment".
3
Moisturize the good field
CCB Chairman Tian Guoli has repeatedly compared "new finance" to "water" in public. Contributing financial resources to society is a process of drainage, irrigation, and moisturization, which is the inclusiveness of finance.
As the mainland enters a new stage of development, in the face of the people's yearning for a better life, a new finance serving the new era has emerged. As a socialist commercial bank, it is first and foremost to serve the real economy and the general public; To serve the majority, not the few. New Finance is committed to jumping out of the 28 law and allowing more people to get life services with financial allocation.
For example, in the vast land of China, rural areas are often the weak link in financial services, and it is difficult to meet the needs of rural users anytime and anywhere by relying only on opening bank branches.
How does CCB do it?
At a press conference of the State Council's new office in 2022, Guo Shuqing, chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, revealed a detail that CCB has found villagers as agents in its banks in more than 400,000 Chinese villages, "just give an iPad, one or two thousand yuan, and do the most basic deposit and withdrawal transaction services." ”
The agent and iPad mentioned by Guo Shuqing rely on the "Yunong Tong" rural revitalization service platform built by CCB in recent years. Offline, CCB has laid more than 400,000 "Yunong Tong" inclusive financial service points across the country, moving banking service windows to village entrances. Online, the financial and non-financial service functions are continuously extended, and on the "Yunong Tong" service platform, through mobile phones, smart screens and other channels, farmers are provided with rural government affairs, e-commerce, convenience affairs and financial services. For example, through the entrance of the "Yunong Fast Loan" product of mobile banking, rural users with borrowing needs only need to log in to mobile banking, automatically connect their personal information to the new agricultural direct reporting system, the national agricultural insurance information management platform, and access dozens of data such as buying and selling fertilizers, seeds, land contracting, poultry and livestock Internet of Things, etc., which can provide a practical and effective reference for the repayment ability of credit loans. Since its launch in June 2020, the balance of "Yunong Fast Loan" farmers' series products has exceeded 100 billion yuan, and has benefited more than 300,000 farmers, with a cumulative loan of more than 40 billion yuan.
There are more warm stories and characters behind the data. CCB uses the power of inclusive finance not only to help rural forces, but also to accompany dreamers in the city.
Globally, SMEs play an important role in increasing the economic vitality of countries. In the past year, the mainland has taken a number of measures to help private enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, reduce taxes and reduce the difficulty of financing. Based on its strong financial technology strength, this service platform for inclusive financial customers can provide a 7*24-hour surrounding bank to achieve online independent loan application, independent processing, and even "one-minute" financing. For a large number of scientific, technologically innovative small, medium and micro enterprises, CCB has taken the lead in building a "technology flow" credit evaluation system that "looks at patents without looking at bricks" through innovative patents, patent pledges, etc., and has worked with the government, enterprises and other parties to improve the "entrepreneur's harbor" service model. Data shows that by the end of 2022, CCB's technology loan balance was 1.23 trillion yuan; "Entrepreneur Harbor" has been extended to 25 provinces and cities, providing nearly 42 billion yuan of credit support to 23,000 enterprises entering the bay.
Whether the financial industry can be "positioned downward" and continue to allow ordinary people and small and medium-sized enterprises to receive support is a sign that tests whether the society can develop in a long and healthy manner. Only when the new finance takes deeper and broader roots can it have stronger vitality. In terms of financial inclusion for small and medium-sized enterprises and the general public, CCB has set an example for a large bank.
4
Technology is like a cloud
In order to achieve inclusive finance, it actually needs the means of technology finance to carry out risk control. A major feature of the new financial action is that "people's nature" is realized by relying on "science and technology".
CCB has been increasing its efforts to improve financial inclusion, but it is not easy to keep the non-performing loan ratio around 1%. A recent event revealed CCB's "magic weapon".
On February 14, 2023, the first phase of "Know My Listed Company - Into Blue Chips" was successfully held. The first special event mainly focused on the theme of "New Finance Action" of CCB, and the venue of the event was specially located in Beijing Daoxiang Lake Production Park, the operation data center of CCB. As the largest data center of CCB, participants can directly experience CCB's advanced global integrated management and automatic monitoring of production and operation, as well as strong technical support strength.
CCB attaches importance to the power of science and technology, not just slogans.
According to public information, from 2018 to 2021, CCB invested a total of 77.316 billion yuan in financial technology, with an average annual growth of 18.98%; The number of fintech personnel of the Group increased from 6,983 at the end of 2017 to 15,121 at the end of 2021, with an average annual growth of 21.31%, which strongly guaranteed the implementation of the fintech strategy.
The strong talent team has enabled CCB to always be in the first echelon of IT infrastructure construction and business system construction in the domestic financial industry in terms of business capabilities. In January 2023, CCB launched the "CCB Cloud" brand in Beijing, launching the first batch of 10 cloud service packages in three categories, providing one-stop solutions for the industry.
As early as 10 years ago, CCB built the largest private cloud in the domestic financial industry at that time, supporting the construction and promotion of the new generation of core systems for several years. In 2018, in the process of upgrading the FinTech strategy, CCB iteratively upgraded and built the industry cloud "CCB Cloud" with new financial sharing characteristics, gradually going through the technical stages of Internet, information creation, and comprehensive integration, comprehensively supporting the development of smart finance and smart ecological business, and becoming one of the representative achievements of the FinTech strategy.
At present, CCB Cloud has elastic, agile and cloud-based financial-grade infrastructure supply capabilities, providing cloud service support for 346 applications in nine major fields, including government affairs, housing, inter-industry, and social livelihood.
As the foundation of the development of the digital economy, cloud computing not only empowers enterprises, but also conveys scientific and technological convenience to the grassroots level. Business from the counter to the "cloud", so that financial resources are accurately delivered to the places where they are most needed, and many grassroots employees jump out of the "financial involvement" and use new methods and tools to serve customers, relieve pain points, and expand business.
As a member of CCB, Chen Jun can now proudly say to customers: "We not only pull deposits and loans, we also know technology very well." "The concept of "no technology, no finance" is taking root in the hearts of the people.
5
A new journey for the future of banking
"New finance has no fixed paradigm, far-reaching but not mysterious, around the people, in subtleties. We strive to give more patience and tolerance, continue to pay attention to long-term, systematic and persistent problems in the process of economic and social development, try to find answers beyond the perspective of finance, and make the allocation of financial resources more fair and just. As CCB Chairman Tian Guoli said, as new technologies of banks continue to reshape the future of new finance, financial institutions are also constantly looking for new functions and attributes.
In 2018, CCB launched the "Workers' Harbor", which opened its business outlets to the public to provide a place for outdoor workers such as couriers, sanitation workers, and taxi drivers to have hot meals, rest and drink. These seemingly inconspicuous measures have brought convenience to tens of thousands of workers.
Chen Jun has personally witnessed and participated in this change, and his network not only has a rest area for the public, but also holds some activities such as anti-fraud propaganda, judicial aid lectures, and even reading and sharing. With these services, more and more workers enter the bank, and he is familiar with the elderly and sanitation workers on the streets where the branch is located, he is no longer the staff inside the bank counter in their eyes, but more like a warm neighbor guy.
Financial institutions are getting closer to the public than ever before. From the establishment of "Workers' Harbor" in about 14,000 CCB business outlets across the country to serve outdoor workers, to the establishment of CCB Training Center, which is committed to promoting the integration of industry and education, empowering society, and "benefiting the people with wisdom", to the layout of the "Yunong Tong" service platform in rural areas across the country, the service boundary of CCB's new finance has continued to extend and practical results have continued to show.
With the advancement of science and technology, digitalization and green and low-carbon transformation and the integration and penetration of the traditional economy, more new areas of finance are being explored and expanded.
What should the bank of the future look like?
The practice of new finance tells everyone that the work of banks should not only repeat the fixed transaction process, not only a simple currency exchange place, but also a service industry that connects the people to live and work in peace and contentment, clothing, food, housing and transportation, which is the perfect integration of technology and feelings.
In the face of the new issues given to financial institutions in the new era, as a large state-controlled commercial bank with a history of nearly 70 years, CCB has always regarded serving national construction and serving the people's livelihood as its basic duty and natural mission.