Three hundred executives vote for future trends, and banks digitize to benefit the masses
On the morning of September 8th, 2023, the C10 Hall of the Bund Conference was fully booked, and three rows of seats were temporarily added by the staff before the opening. However, dozens of people still stood behind and listened to the entire "Digital Banking Advancing Financial Health" Insights Forum.
Why is everyone so interested? A guest present answered the reporter's question: "In the financial field, the digitalization of the banking industry is at the forefront. Exploring the digitalization of the banking industry helps to think about the future direction of digitalization in the financial industry, and everyone is dealing with banks. The digitalization of the banking industry not only affects social and economic development, but also affects the lives of millions of people."
To what extent has the banking industry been digitized? What are the future development trends? At this forum, the attending guests not only expressed their opinions and shared their views, but also took out voting tools to directly vote for the answers in their hearts.
From data-driven to technology driven
When three hundred bank executives pulled out their voting devices, the atmosphere of the forum reached its climax. The host asks questions and provides options, and guests make choices within 30 seconds.
From the results, there is not much disagreement among industry insiders: over 92% of people's banks will increase investment in artificial intelligence in the future; 79% of people's banks are exploring or planning to explore the application of large models; Nearly 60% of people believe that the big model will be implemented in the banking industry within 1 to 3 years; More than 71% of people believe that cloud native is the optimal IT architecture for banks
This result is consistent with the views expressed by international data company IDC on this forum - personal banking, AI risk control, digital employees, edge IoT, and cloud native architecture are the five major trends in the development of digital technology in banks.
Regardless of the development direction, technology is always a key word. It has become a consensus that the digital development of banks has shifted from data-driven to technology driven.
"More than a decade ago, it was unimaginable to guarantee the repayment of a loan to a client whom I had never met before. Today, after digital transformation, mobile applications for real-time small loan products have become a standard feature of banks, thanks to a series of technological advancements such as digital auditing and digital risk control." A guest said. Behind this progress lies the accumulation of data, but more importantly, technological breakthroughs are needed, such as how to process data and how to use AI to control risks.
Feng Liang, the president of an online commercial bank, gave an interesting case where they analyzed the growth of crops through satellite images as a basis for granting credit to farmers.
Rural finance has natural pain points and difficulties: poor digitalization leads to a lack of data foundation; Wide geographical distribution of customers leads to high service costs; The long production cycle of crops and various external factors lead to difficulties in post loan management, which are challenges faced by rural finance.
"We had a wild idea at the time, which was whether we could use satellite technology to solve the difficulties in rural finance in 2019," Feng Liang recalled. This idea gradually became a reality through technological efforts - the initial satellite images were just images, which could not be used to determine whether crops were planted or grown well. However, through extensive machine learning and computation, the project team translated satellite images into information that ordinary people could understand.
"Different crops have different spectral reflections, and different meteorological conditions can lead to varying degrees of natural disasters. Through research, we have achieved a recognition rate of over 93% for main grain crops, which can be applied to financial credit services. In the first half of this year, more than 1.2 million people have obtained contactless loans through this satellite remote sensing risk control system." Feng Liang said that the development of technology has opened up more possibilities for bank financial services.
Enable scarce services to benefit everyone
The emergence of these possibilities is to enable banking services to benefit more people. Many banks are researching and developing inclusive finance, so that the vitality of finance can irrigate more small and micro enterprises and help more ordinary people. But just like rural finance, there are many difficulties and pain points in granting credit to small and micro enterprises and individuals. Nowadays, people have found that digitalization in the banking industry is the best way to solve various difficulties and pain points.
"Why it used to be easier for large enterprises to obtain loans in the past was mainly because their risk management was easier, and banks also wanted to serve a large number of small and micro enterprises well. However, in most cases, banks did not have enough manpower and material resources to assess risks. From the perspective of supply and demand, this is the scarcity of services, and limited services cannot take care of so many enterprises." A banking industry insider attending the forum told reporters.
Similarly, for individuals, banks are unable to arrange exclusive customer service and provide exclusive services for every customer, which is due to the scarcity of service resources.
However, the rapid development of technologies such as AI risk control, generative AI, and large models has made breakthrough progress in the digital development of the banking industry.
For example, now through mobile banking, small and micro enterprises and ordinary people can access financial services at any time. At the same time, many banks have also hired digital employees who hold various positions such as wealth planners, document auditors, lobby managers, telephone customer service, brand ambassadors, etc., providing exclusive services to bank customers, including not only financial services but also life services.
"It is expected that by 2025, more than 80% of banks will deploy digital personnel to undertake 90% of customer service and financial consulting services. With the implementation and application of big models, digital employees' understanding of text, language, and business will become the norm." Wu Lianfeng, Vice President and Chief Analyst of IDC China, said at the forum.
