At 9 a.m., CICC in the office building of the International Trade Building began to get busy, and bankers came in to start a new day's work. The IT team also began a new day of technology exploration. Mechanical keyboards, dual-screen offices, lifting office equipment can be seen everywhere, and CICC's information technology department is full of geek atmosphere. At head securities companies doing information technology, their work is even more curious.
2021 is a critical year for CICC's digital transformation. In March this year, Dr. Cheng Long joined CICC, taking full responsibility for the company's information technology related management work and planning a layout for CICC's digital transformation. The securities industry is an information-intensive industry, it is highly dependent on IT, CICC attaches great importance to digital transformation and the intensity of implementation, but this is not an easy task, IT team not only to solve the current business problems, but also to dialogue with the future, and strive to occupy the commanding heights of competition in the digital age.
Partners who love technology have one thing in common, and always maintain a pure heart for technology. What excites this group of engineers even more is that the top financial and computer talents are constantly colliding with new sparks every day, and this creates another sense of quantifiable success.
Considering that the core problem of finance is to solve a very basic constraint between people, that is, information asymmetry, and solving information asymmetry is the core of the digitalization of the financial industry, such work is extremely tempting for any computer talent who is a bit "ambitious".
<h2>Finance + Computer = ? </h2>
The digitization of Securities Companies in China is not a new topic, and the trend has become more and more fierce in recent years.
In 2020, the China Securities Association released the "Research Report on Promoting the Digital Transformation and Development of the Securities Industry", pointing out that under the new situation of the rising tide of digitalization, promoting the digital transformation of the securities industry and achieving dynamic change, efficiency change and quality change is the only way for the high-quality development of China's securities industry.
How important is digitalization to the securities industry? Maybe you can learn a little bit from the movie "The Hummingbird Project". In the movie, two Central American futures traders try to build a straight-line fiber-optic cable from Kansas to New Jersey in order to make a huge amount of money, just to save a millisecond of information dissemination time. It can be seen that saving a millisecond may become the first place in the industry, and the significance of the first place is beyond doubt.
Speed is everything, but a basic common sense is that china's securities companies are far from digital enough.
On June 18, the Securities Association of China released the ranking of the operating performance of securities companies in 2020, and the data shows that the amount of information technology investment in the whole industry in 2020 accounted for only 7.47% of the operating income in 2019. At the same time, most securities companies are "crowded" in a narrow area with less than 200 million information investment and less than 5 billion operating income.
The securities industry has no production and logistics, only information flow and capital flow, which is itself processing information, so it is very dependent on technology. There is no need for polytechnic thinking to calculate, and intuition will also tell everyone that there is still a lot of room for digitalization in the securities industry.
The more complicated the road ahead, the more it requires firm persistence. The integration of finance and technology is deepening, the Internet platform achieves curve overtaking across fields, and at the same time, in the face of competitors in the international environment, technology cannot keep up.
Combined with the current business layout, CICC put forward important strategic measures of "digitalization, regionalization, internationalization" and "CICC One". For CICC, digitalization is a top priority for future development.
At present, the results of CICC's digital team are remarkable. The IT department handed over a satisfactory answer: promote business process automation, gradually build a unified platform, and promote "the same function, the same system"; create a market-leading innovation platform and build an open technology ecosystem; realize the agile innovation of the whole organization, apply cutting-edge technology on a large scale, and achieve the most technologically empowering world-class investment bank.
In the process of digital advancement, the concept of "OneCICC, One Data" is particularly prominent. For example, the Beidou platform independently developed by CICC, relying on its highly flexible technical framework and lightweight development methods, adopts the PaaS platform as a service model to build a multi-user, multi-level and multi-functional cloud ecosystem for the company. While meeting the customization needs of various departments and business lines, it is possible to realize the integration of systems and data on a unified platform. In the future, the Beidou platform will start from the existing business and innovation needs of each line of the company, summarize and precipitate user scenarios, sort out and formulate construction plans, and carry out scene co-construction through deep integration and agile iteration to achieve data empowerment.
Around the digital evolution, CICC has built five major digital platforms: Cangqi, Qingtian, Tianji, Jiuzhang and Beidou. It is worth mentioning that CICC has a first-mover advantage in the field of independent research and development. Compared with many domestic securities companies, CICC's digital transformation is more thorough, starting from the digital process with the international leading investment banks as a reference, and all the core trading systems are independently developed.
In a highly competitive industry, achieving leapfrog development is not only something that individuals need to devote themselves to, but also require the full cooperation and collective cooperation of the team.
<h2>Internet, adhere to the talent strategy</h2>
In order to promote digitalization, the OKR culture and agile tribal system that are popular among major domestic Internet companies have taken root in CICC, and CICC has taken root in the process of recruiting technology-based talents, in order to ensure the market competitiveness of attracting talents, it refers to the Internet grade system and directly benchmarks the CICC rank with the Internet industry.
CICC's cherishing of scientific and technological talents is beyond doubt. There are two reasons: one is the environment of the financial industry, and the other is the emotional drive of CICC.
From a trend point of view, China's financial system is accelerating the transformation from indirect financing to direct financing. This is both an opportunity and a challenge, and how securities companies can have their core competitiveness on this road is the key. CICC has set itself the goal of building a "world-class investment bank", so the technology side must also stand on a PK platform with the international investment bank.
Observing foreign investment banks, the industry suffered major layoffs after the 2008 financial crisis, and Goldman Sachs was no exception, but the number of technology employees did not decrease but increased.
The demand for financial technology talents in the capital market has entered a significant upward period in recent years, and the annual expansion rate of the industry is about 20%.
Therefore, for CICC at this moment, the significance of seizing and respecting scientific and technological talents is different from usual.
Cheng Long introduced to 36Kr, "The biggest resource of securities companies is talent, and with the acceleration of the digital transformation of the industry, scientific and technological talents themselves are competitive." ”
In CICC's digital talent team, more than 70% of the 985/211 school background personnel, more than 60% of the master's degree or above, and more than 80% of the people under the age of 35. The financial sector remains a major source of talent, close to half the level. In recent years, CICC has also introduced some pioneering talents from Internet companies and technology companies.
At the same time as introducing talents, the information technology department of CICC is also strengthening the construction of talent training system. The company's in-house online training platform has professional courses and technical certifications covering a variety of technical languages. In daily work, the team has formed a culture of sharing, openness and inclusiveness, and often holds various types of technical exchange activities, such as hackathons, challenges, agile sharing, technology salons, etc., to fully stimulate the creativity and innovation of the team. In addition, every technical talent has the opportunity to communicate and cooperate with senior industry experts and technical experts, and experience the rapid improvement of technical strength in practice.
The thirst for talents for scientific and technological talents is the trend of the development of the industry, and in the matter of fully absorbing scientific and technological talents, CICC's steps are smooth and firm.
Cheng Long believes that digital transformation is not only a matter for the IT department, but also requires the joint efforts of the entire company, and the profession of programmer can not only obtain technical development in CICC, but also usher in greater development space through understanding and familiarity with financial business in technology development. Even if you don't have a financial background, as long as you have the ability to learn quickly and self-drive, you can get enough room for career growth.
"CICC is a place that combines personal dreams with dreams of home and country, and the sense of mission of employees within the company is very strong." Speaking of these young and enterprising fresh blood, Cheng Long revealed a sentimental side, "'Taking the country as the heart' is the original intention that CICC has always upheld, and over the past 26 years, CICC has always taken the service of the national strategy as its own responsibility, and has continued to grow and expand in the process of continuously serving the reform and opening up and helping the development of the capital market, and achieving its own development." By striving to attract, develop and retain the best talent and develop its business to the highest professional standards, CICC can better serve economic development and social progress. In CICC, everyone has the opportunity to integrate the small bureau of personal development into the overall situation of national development, which is the most attractive and cohesive force for employees. ”
Continuously providing higher quality and more efficient financial services for the real economy and further providing customers with diversified and differentiated financial products is also the historical mission of CICC and even the entire securities industry.
A new era has arrived, and embracing digitalization is both a matter of following the trend and challenging oneself. CICC will steadily promote digital transformation, adhere to the customer-centric, data-driven and intelligent business model, fully realize business agility, and embrace the future in a higher dimension.
In the historical process of financial and technological integration, CICC is only a microcosm, and digital and technological technologies will accelerate empowerment and promote the leapfrog development of the industry.