Recently, China Information Technology, together with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei, Jinzhen Information Technology and other units, jointly released the "Deepening Cultivation, Huazhang Rixin - 2023 Financial Technology Industry Transformation and Upgrading: The Core Downward Movement of Information Technology Transformation and Upgrading in the Financial Industry" (hereinafter referred to as "**Zhang Jin, General Manager of the Financial Technology Department of Shenzhou Information, Song Yong, Deputy General Manager of Alibaba Cloud's New Finance Business Department, and Han Man, General Manager of the Distributed New Core Business of Huawei Digital Finance Corps, accepted financial electronics, Interviews with economics, science and technology, etc.
(The following is part of the transcript of the interview with Jinke Dialogue Phase 8-**).
Digitization of Finance: What is the significance of publishing?
In fact, in the process of practice, we have found that many customers, including ourselves, are constantly summarizing some key elements of financial informatization, especially in the last year or so, in May last year, the regulator has important requirements for the core downward, and we, Huawei, Alibaba, and other manufacturers, have also been exploring the essence of financial information innovation, including some best practices for the core downward.
[Zhang Jin, General Manager of the Financial Technology Department of China Information Technology].
Electronic Finance: What are the stages of digital transformation of finance?
In the past 40 years, with the continuous enrichment and development of banking business, we have issued a book to summarize the evolution and iteration process of the entire IT system of the bank, and divide it into four stages, including the stand-alone era, the online networking era, the era of big data centralization, and the current distributed and cloud-native era.
Let me give you an example, in the past, it used to take half a month to transfer money, but now it is real-time seconds. Based on the significant increase in the efficiency and richness of banking services, the significant increase in the same business has also brought new problems, that is, the volume of data business transactions, including the complexity of business transactions, has increased significantly.
[Song Yong, Deputy General Manager of Alibaba Cloud New Finance Division].
Economy**: What are the difficulties in the various stages of digital transformation?
I think the digital transformation of finance has also gone through three stages. In the first stage, when people talked about digital transformation in the past, they regarded it more as an informatization thing, thinking that digital transformation was nothing more than the business system to be upgraded, and the new beginning was still ignorant.
The second stage is to recognize that digital transformation is not just a matter of technology, and everyone finds that when every industry talks about digital transformation, it is raised to the level of the industry.
The third stage is actually the most difficult, because many things are easier said than done, with the idea of digital transformation, with such a plan, in the process of implementation, you will find that there are organizational problems, personnel problems, budget problems, and technical problems.
[Zhang Jin, General Manager of the Financial Technology Department of China Information Technology].
Zero One Finance: What do banks need to do in the process of digital transformation?
Throughout the process of digital transformation, we must not only help banks do digital transformation, but also empower banks. In this process, the top leaders of financial institutions should also have patience to see the overall progress, because since the transformation is to be done, it is not achieved overnight, but also needs to have a cycle, in the process of this cycle, the capabilities provided by the vendor is a new architecture, and the bank's scientific and technological personnel, including business personnel, should also learn to update Xi the existing knowledge structure and knowledge framework, so as to make the results of the transformation of the distributed architecture help the bank better support the agility and innovation of its entire business.
[Han Man, General Manager of the New Distributed Core Business of Huawei Digital Finance Corps].
Technology**: What are the pain points in the process of digital transformation of banks?
There are several levels of pain points, the first level is to say that the development of the whole bank pays special attention to digital transformation, we have a consensus, we will not say that digital transformation is a paper that everyone reads out, but attention does not mean that it can be well controlled, now many banks have attached great importance to it, and there are also three-year and five-year plans for the digital transformation of banks, but in the actual implementation process, it is found that a good plan can be effectively implemented, which is a pain point.
Another pain point is that in the entire technological development of the bank, its architecture has reached a stage of adjustment, just now Mr. Song actually mentioned that the entire traditional architecture in the past, centralized way, we now have a lot of new technologies, such as everyone is now paying special attention to cloud technology, How distributed technology, and even AIGC technology, can play a better role in the architecture, like the hot intelligent computing that many of our customers are also concerned about, and what kind of changes in the architecture of it will have from traditional computing to new intelligent computing need to be considered.
We all know that in the past, banks had corporate business and private business, and many banks, especially traditional banks, may have more corporate business, and now they want to learn from it. However, we still have a large number of small and medium-sized banks, their scientific and technological strength is relatively weak, may only have two or three hundred scientific and technological strength, and even many customers may have less than 100 scientific and technological personnel. In summary, the implementation of consulting planning, architecture transformation and change, the development of application innovation, and the improvement of talents are some of the pain points faced by the financial industry in the entire business development and technological development.
[Zhang Jin, General Manager of the Financial Technology Department of China Information Technology].
Hexun: How can banks and enterprises use large models to improve overall efficiency?
For enterprises, large models can be used to improve production efficiency, such as intelligent customer service, smart marketing, and smart operation can also help enterprises improve efficiency. Speaking of challenges, in fact, AI will also bring us a lot of challenges, in terms of data quality and compliance, we also need to do some basic work on this part in the process of using large models, so that large models can better improve our production efficiency.
In addition, in terms of data quality, I think that now including financial institutions, in the data has not been used very well, just now Mr. Zhang including Mr. Song also mentioned that today's banks are on the one hand to do a big core transformation, the other is data, now the big banks may be slightly better, but in many small and medium-sized institutions, there are still a variety of problems, its data dimensions may still be relatively small, large banks may have thousands of dimensions and tens of thousands of dimensions, small and medium-sized institutions data is still relatively simple, even if a large model is used, the amount of data is not enough, it is difficult to train a good large model。
[Han Man, General Manager of the New Distributed Core Business of Huawei Digital Finance Corps].
Jinke Dialogue: Why is the digital transformation of finance a top project?
Let's talk about why it is a first-class project, because it involves people, organizations, and a lot of risks and management. Because if you want to move the core, first of all, it has a certain risk, and the business that the core starts from may have something to do with the business department, and how much benefit it can bring to the business department after moving the core, the business department may also have to participate.
This process is not only a matter of the science and technology department, but also needs the business department and the science and technology department to work together, and there needs to be collaboration, so there needs to be a higher level to see how much help this matter will bring to the enterprise, so it is a first-class project.
[Han Man, General Manager of the New Distributed Core Business of Huawei Digital Finance Corps].
Jinke Dialogue: What are the expectations of the industry through the release of ***?
This time, the title is called Huazhang Rixin, which also represents the feeling of our creation process with the manufacturer, whether the whole core is Xinchuang or the core is moved down, this road is actually very difficult, so we hope to work hard and do this thing together. Huazhang Rixin also means that with everyone's efforts, the informatization, digitization, financial information innovation, and core shift of our entire financial industry will have a better future.
[Zhang Jin, General Manager of the Financial Technology Department of China Information Technology].
This year, we released the transformation and upgrading of information technology in the financial industry together with China Information Technology, which is also a very important breakthrough for us. In the early stage, since 2008, we have done a lot of cases with many large banks, and since 2021, we are now more deeply involved in regional banks, because the entire technological strength of regional banks will be relatively weak.
Together with DCIT, we have also begun to vigorously deploy in regional banks. From infrastructure, from hardware, network, storage to the cloud platform, to the database and financial pass, financial institutions are currently all strategic investments, and we hope to help regional banks and large banks. To borrow a sentence from Mr. Zhang, we will work hard to renew Huazhang, and hope that we will have more opportunities together in the future.
[Han Man, General Manager of the New Distributed Core Business of Huawei Digital Finance Corps].
In the process of compiling ***, including today's discussion, I am particularly excited, because cloud native, distributed, including in the process of financial information innovation, in the process of moving the core system downward, our partners together on some of the problems faced by the industry, and what kind of technical means, business means, We have compiled it together to form a general industry capability, which is particularly meaningful to guide us in the next stage of the financial industry, especially the digital transformation process of banks.
An industry has come to a critical node, especially with 40 years of full and rapid development, and it represents a relatively high level of IT industry, at the key node, we do it together, which is particularly meaningful, and is very valuable to the actual work in the future, whether it is the customer or our work. I also look forward to working with more partners in the future, to be able to write what we have written on paper today, layer by layer, to create greater business value for more of our bank customers.
[Song Yong, Deputy General Manager of Alibaba Cloud New Finance Division].