-Investigation report on the current situation and trend of financial informatization development in China.
(2006-04-26 10: 14:58)
Editor's note:
As the core and lifeline of modern economy, financial industry plays a fundamental role in improving the efficiency of social resource allocation by guiding capital flow. Especially in today's information age, the financial industry is facing great development opportunities brought by high technology.
Encounter, but also faced with fierce competition after industry barriers were broken by high-tech enterprises and comprehensive service institutions, the traditional financial industry is facing the arduous task of transforming into modern financial service industry. Our investigation found that the financial industry has always attached great importance to the application of information technology, and informatization has become an important means to lead the financial modernization. For this reason, our reporter wrote a survey report on financial informatization, analyzed the three characteristics of the development of financial informatization abroad, and provided a typical case of China Merchants Bank informatization, hoping to help readers understand the current situation and development trend of financial informatization.
Financial industry is an important part of modern service industry, which communicates the economic activities of the whole society and becomes the core of modern economy. As a knowledge-intensive industry, modern financial industry is more and more knowledgeable and informative in organizational structure, business process, business development and customer service. This industry attribute determines that the modern financial industry must be supported by the rapid development of information technology, and financial informatization came into being. Our investigation found that the financial industry has always attached great importance to the application of information technology. Information technology not only plays a fundamental role in building a convenient, efficient and safe financial service system, but also plays an important role in improving the internal management level of enterprises and improving the efficiency of resource allocation. At a time when the financial industry is increasingly showing strong support for the efficient allocation of social resources, informatization has become the lifeblood of modern financial services.
Informatization to create efficient internal management
On April 20, 2006, the mainframe and communication network of China UnionPay broke down. It is said that at least 340,000 merchants and 60,000 ATMs around the world are affected. This network failure led to the interruption of inter-bank business and credit card consumption for about 6 hours, and millions of inter-bank transactions across the country could not be completed. The dependence of the financial industry on the information network can be described as inseparable for a time.
The financial industry is one of the earliest industries that introduced information technology into enterprise management. As early as 1950s, advanced foreign banks began to use computers for centralized bill entry, realizing batch accounting management, which became the beginning of financial informationization. The informatization of international financial industry has entered the stage of bank reengineering and virtual business after going through the stage of single machine batch processing, online real-time processing and management informatization. Although China's financial informatization started later than developed countries, it basically followed the same development stage and moved towards the goal of financial modernization. At present, China's financial industry, represented by commercial banks, has basically completed the centralized construction of data, and is at the forefront of domestic industry informatization.
Chen Jing, counselor of the People's Bank of China and member of the National Informatization Expert Advisory Committee, pointed out that "without informatization, there would be no financial modernization", and informatization is the only way for the development of China's financial industry. According to statistics, at present, China's banking system has more than 700 large and medium-sized computers, more than 6,000 minicomputers, more than 500,000 PCs and servers, nearly 30,000 ATMs and 220,000 POS terminals. The securities industry has established an efficient and reliable trading communication network. The two-way VSAT satellite network, high-speed one-way satellite data broadcasting network and ground communication private network of Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges connect about 3,000 securities business departments across the country, providing transmission channels for information such as entrustment, quotation and consultation for securities companies, and basically realizing mutual backup of satellite networks and ground networks. In the past three years, the average annual IT investment in the insurance industry is about 1 1 100 million yuan, accounting for 0.6% of the three-year average premium. Generally, financial institutions in various countries have established two sets of high-speed internal network systems, which are backup to each other. They can exchange information between banks, between banks and securities institutions, between banks and customs, taxation and finance, and interconnect some systems through networks.
Baird, senior vice president of global financial services at SAP, believes that the whole financial business process can be informationized, and financial services naturally need information support. Financial service industry belongs to digital intensive industry, and its services do not involve logistics, but only involve the storage, processing and transmission of digital symbols, so financial services are very suitable for converting into binary codes for computer processing. At the same time, due to frequent changes in interest rates, exchange rates and stock prices, information and transactions related to financial products, especially securities, are highly time-sensitive, so the content of financial services has a very high "time value". The high-speed data processing, transmission and safe storage capabilities of computers and networks are very suitable for the development of financial services.
Informatization is the cornerstone of financial business process reengineering, which can help the financial industry to fundamentally rethink and design the existing business processes, reorganize the work scattered in various functional departments according to the operational processes that are most conducive to customer value creation, and make financial enterprises effectively adapt to market requirements. Paul's research. The research by H.Allen, an expert in bank reengineering in the United States, shows that during the ten years from 1980 to 1990, 13 large banks in the United States used information technology every year, and the average return on assets and capital after bank reengineering increased from 1% and 14% respectively. In 2005, China's banking industry staged a number of major dramas of core business information transformation. China CITIC Bank, China Development Bank and China Minsheng Bank have successively introduced foreign advanced core business systems and embarked on the road of information transformation.
By the end of the Tenth Five-Year Plan, China's commercial banks have basically completed the construction of data processing centers and centralized processing of business data, and management informatization has become the focus of future construction. Data concentration has laid a good foundation for the construction of management information system. On the basis of collecting and mining perfect customer information, transaction information and other financial information, some commercial banks began to try to develop and comprehensively utilize information, and initially established a decision support platform represented by credit risk management system, customer relationship management, asset-liability management and financial supervision system by using data warehouse technology. At the same time, the bank started the construction of management information system, gradually established a unified decision support platform, and promoted the application of information technology from the business operation level to the management decision-making level. Modern bank management and decision-making system based on information technology is gradually being established.
Informatization supports all-round customer service
Once upon a time, when we went to the business hall of the bank, we had to queue up one meter away. In order to save time, we had to carefully observe which team had fewer people. Now, as long as customers get the queuing list from the automatic queuing machine according to the business type, the bank's queuing management system will assign customers to the most suitable window to handle business. All we have to do is sit on the sofa prepared by the business hall and wait quietly. We can even use the time difference to do our own thing. The small queue management system makes the bank's services closer to customers. Chen Jing believes that it has become an inevitable trend for the development of the financial industry to establish a business philosophy centered on customer needs and provide customers with full-featured, personalized and all-weather financial services at any time, anywhere and in any way.
Bank card service is a typical example of providing all-weather service relying on information technology. Under the condition of modern market economy, the scale, amount and frequency of commodity transactions are increasing day by day, and traditional payment methods such as cash and check can no longer meet the requirements of the rapid development of modern commodity transactions. In order to meet customers' demand for new payment methods, banks in western developed countries introduced electronic bank cards in the 1960s, which became a common payment method. Since 1985, Bank of China has issued the first Zhang Changcheng bank card in China, and the domestic bank card business has developed rapidly. As of March 2005, China has issued more than 800 million bank cards, reaching 827 million. According to VISA International's investigation and analysis of the credit card market in China, the potential target population of credit cards in China is 30-60 million, and it is estimated that the middle-income population in China may exceed 200 million in 20 10. According to Goldman Sachs' prediction, the credit balance of credit cards in China will reach 80 billion yuan in 2006, and the interest income alone may exceed 654.38+0.4 billion yuan, so there is a huge market space for credit cards.
The new lifestyle in the Internet era has also prompted banks to launch new services. According to the report of China Internet Network Information Center, as of June 65438+February 3, 2005, the total number of Internet users in China exceeded 1 billion, reaching 1. 1. 1 billion, of which broadband Internet users reached 64.3 million. With the great improvement of network infrastructure and the comprehensive recovery of e-commerce in China, online shopping has sprung up, and the number of online shoppers reached 20 million in the first half of 2005 alone. More than half of them are frequent online shoppers, and the online shopping amount exceeds 654.38+0 billion yuan. More and more netizens choose online payment as the payment method of online shopping.
Chinese banks such as Bank of China, China Merchants Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and other financial institutions have successively launched online banking services to provide customers with a package of financial services such as information retrieval, online payment, transfer, loan, payment of various fees, bond trading and personal finance. China Merchants Bank takes the development strategy of "prospering through science and technology", and its online banking business is quite representative. Compared with the four major state-owned commercial banks, China Merchants Bank does not have many business outlets and many years of market base. By actively building the brand of "One Netcom" online banking, it has quickly gained a certain market share in just a few years, and the annual growth rate of RMB savings deposits has remained at around 50% for a long time. As of August 2005, China Merchants Bank's online banking has nearly 1000000 online banking customers and more than1000 online cooperative merchants. Statistics show that from June 5438 to August 2005, the online commercial banking transactions of China Merchants Bank reached140 billion yuan, and the online personal banking transactions reached 230 billion yuan.
The financial industry follows the famous "28 Law", that is, 20% of high-end customers create 80% of profits. As long as enterprises seize these 20% people, they will seize 80% of the market. Therefore, high-end customers have become a hot potato in the eyes of financial enterprises, and the characteristic services of finance in the future will be inclined to VIPs. How to use information technology to seize the high-quality customer base, provide them with the best service and earn the most lucrative profits has become the focus of future financial services development.
Informatization promotes the competitiveness of financial industry
In today's information age, while fully grasping the development opportunities brought by high technology, the financial industry is also facing fierce competition from high-tech enterprises and comprehensive service institutions after breaking down industry barriers. Bill Gates even asserted that "traditional commercial banks will be a group of dinosaurs and will be extinct in 2 1 century". Facing the impact, the financial industry should adopt information technology more actively, conform to the requirements of the changing times, and embark on a road of sustainable development to adapt to the increasingly fierce industry competition.
Financial product innovation is the main factor reflecting the sustainable development ability of financial enterprises. The famous Citibank has become an innovation leader in the industry because it can provide more than 6,000 kinds of financial innovative products. According to statistics, 95% of western financial innovation comes from information technology, while China's financial innovation products 100% are based on information technology. Using information technology, financial enterprises can design complex financial products and carry out effective risk management. At present, all major commercial banks in China have established a unified business application platform, forming a fully functional electronic banking system including online banking, telephone banking, corporate banking, self-service banking, mobile banking and other products, showing new business advantages.
With the increasing globalization of financial competition and the rapid development of network economy, the trend of comprehensive development of financial services such as banking, securities, trust and insurance is also strengthening. 1999165438+1October 12, the Financial Services Modernization Act of the United States was officially signed into effect, which marked that the United States abandoned the separate operation mode at the turn of the century and entered a new era of mixed operation. At present, the mixed operation trend of domestic financial industry is becoming more and more obvious. In 2000, domestic banks, insurance and securities companies carried out a series of business cross-cutting and cooperation. Since 2002, financial holding groups such as CITIC, China Everbright, China Merchants and Minsheng have emerged. Because financial holding companies have a wide range of management, such as CITIC Holdings Limited, the first financial holding company in China, which manages financial enterprises such as banks, securities, trusts, asset management, futures, leasing and funds. Financial institutions are required to establish comprehensive financial transactions and financial products supermarkets through information construction to provide a package of high value-added comprehensive financial services.
Driven by the trend of economic globalization, financial services should be continuously provided on a global scale. Today, more than half of the world's large financial enterprises are doing business all over the world. Citigroup's branches, subsidiaries, subsidiaries, joint ventures and offices are all over the world 100 countries; Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch have become major traders, underwriters and M&A consultants in the global capital market. The insurance giant AXA Group has 6.5438+0.4 million employees in more than 60 countries around the world. Financial globalization has become the general trend of international financial development in the 2 1 century, and the premise of financial globalization is the application of information technology, especially the construction of digital and networked environment. China's financial enterprises have taken the first step to meet the financial globalization. In June 2002, China UnionPay became a major member of two international organizations, VISA and MasterCard. Its clearing system is connected with the global clearing network systems of VISA and MasterCard, and the member institutions of China UnionPay can complete international transactions through the global clearing system.
With the development of modern financial industry, informatization has increasingly become a sharp weapon to enhance the competitiveness of the industry. (Wang Jian)
typical case
China Merchants Bank: Informatization to Build Core Competitiveness
China Merchants Bank was established on April 8, 1987. After nearly 20 years of development, it has developed from a small regional bank located in the corner of Shekou, Shenzhen to a national commercial bank with a certain scale and strength, and initially formed an institutional system and business network based in Shenzhen, radiating the whole country and facing overseas. In March 2006, China Merchants Bank ranked first among 13 commercial banks in the 2005-2006 China Commercial Bank Competitiveness Report issued by Banker Research Center. The rapid and steady development of China Merchants Bank not only benefits from the good policy and market environment, but also the great value created by informatization construction is the key driving factor.
From "one card" to "one netcom", information technology has created a banking myth.
Information network technology has become the cornerstone of China Merchants Bank's financial business innovation, the fundamental means to practice the business philosophy of "changing with you" and the foundation to improve the level of internal control management. At the beginning of CCB, China Merchants Bank clearly put forward the development strategy of "prospering the bank through science and technology", that is, the principles of "unified management, unified planning, unified demand and unified system". While other banks are still busy with the construction of e-finance informatization in their own province and region, China Merchants Bank has established a national unified system development platform. It is precisely because of the height of "four unifications" and advanced customer management methods abroad that China Merchants Bank's electronic debit card "One Card" can take the lead in realizing the universal deposit and withdrawal of all counters and the networking of all POS machines and ATMs in China, which is regarded as a pioneering work of China banking industry in personal finance. The application of information technology in banking business began to show great benefits, and initially established the social image of China Merchants Bank as a "technology-leading" bank.
During the period of 1999, the network tide surged, and China Merchants Bank keenly seized the huge opportunity brought by the Internet and put forward the development strategy of "business networking". Ma Weihua, president of China Merchants Bank, believes that the network economy has laid a material and technical foundation for the functional transformation of traditional banks, and the information revolution has opened up a broader development space for traditional banks. Under the guidance of this concept, China Merchants Bank launched the first domestic online banking "One Netcom" in September, 1999. So far, "One Netcom" is in a leading position in the domestic industry in terms of technology, safety and business volume. As of August 2005, China Merchants Bank's online banking has nearly 1000000 online banking customers and more than1000 online cooperative merchants. Moreover, the "cement+mouse" model pioneered by China Merchants Bank played a key role in its successful listing in the future, and also provided reference for the reform and development of China's financial industry.
While insisting on independent development, China Merchants Bank actively introduced foreign advanced technology and carried out localization transformation to make it more suitable for China's national conditions. @ Credit Rating Service is an Internet global enterprise credit inquiry service jointly developed by China Merchants Bank and COFCO (Shanghai) Information Service Co., Ltd. ... This service comes from the @ @rating solution of Cofas Group, a world-renowned credit insurance and credit management company. After the introduction of digestion, China Merchants Bank set up the "China Merchants Bank Enterprise Credit Network", and customers can conveniently check the credit status of global enterprises through China Merchants Bank's "One Netcom".
From "thriving with science and technology" to "changing with you", information technology innovates financial services.
China Merchants Bank adheres to the development strategy of "prospering through science and technology", takes the market and customer demand as the guide, gives full play to the advantages of having a unified electronic platform for the whole bank, attaches great importance to transforming information technology achievements into visible financial products and services on the basis of the rapidly developing information technology network, and builds well-known financial brands such as "One Card", "One Netcom", "Golden Sunflower Wealth Management" and China Merchants Bank Credit Card, and establishes technologies. In April 2006,
65438-0998 In order to adapt to the development of financial electronization, standardize the information planning management of China Merchants Bank and promote the informatization construction of China Merchants Bank, China Merchants Bank established the Information Planning Committee (hereinafter referred to as the "Information Committee"). Under the guidance of the Information Committee, China Merchants Bank adhered to the customer-centered development strategy and the principle of independent development of core business systems, and successfully developed a series of application software such as digital authentication certificates. Adhering to the business philosophy of "change with you", China Merchants Bank uses information technology to improve customer service, and is committed to providing customers with efficient, convenient, thoughtful and warm services, which has narrowed the distance between banks and customers.
China Merchants Bank took the lead in establishing online banking, telephone banking, mobile banking, self-service banking and other electronic service networks in China to provide customers with "3A" modern financial services. According to the theory of market segmentation, China Merchants Bank has launched the "Golden Sunflower Financial Management" service while continuing to provide corporate services, and is committed to providing high-quality and efficient personal financial management services to high-end customers. In August 2004, China Merchants Bank took the lead in establishing a "customer satisfaction index system" in China, which provided a strong guarantee for the continuous improvement of management quality and service quality. (Wang Jian)
Advice from others
The informatization of foreign financial industry presents three characteristics.
The development of foreign financial industry is relatively early, and correspondingly, the informationization of financial industry started very early. Since 1960s, banks, securities and insurance industries began to use computers instead of manual operation, which opened the door to informationization and made great progress.
As early as 1950s, the financial industry in developed countries introduced computer equipment to handle its specific business, in order to improve work efficiency and service level, and created many new financial products. The informatization development of its financial industry has roughly experienced four stages: offline business processing; Online business processing; Informatization of business decision-making; Business integration and intelligent decision. Through this gradual evolution, foreign financial industry has realized computer-aided processing of banking business, internal online business processing, information resource sharing, customer information analysis, new products and business construction through information technology.
Various information systems have stimulated the vitality of the traditional financial industry and laid a solid foundation for the transformation of financial enterprises into modern financial giants. According to the statistics of Paul H. Allen, an American bank reengineering expert, from 1980 to 1996, there are 13 large banks in the United States using information technology to implement reengineering plans every year, and the average return on assets and return on capital after bank reengineering are from the original 1% and14 respectively. According to the data, more than 70 of the US 100 major banks have implemented or are implementing CRM (Customer Relationship Management) projects. A survey report by Datamonitor, a market research organization, also shows that 42% of European banks continued to increase their investment in CRM in 2002. Looking at the financial informatization construction in developed countries abroad, although their progress is different, on the whole, their financial information systems mainly show three characteristics:
-Widely used and advanced equipment. Since IBM's 702 computer was first installed in Bank of America, various novel computer devices have been introduced into the financial industry. These big banks often spend a lot of money to update the software and hardware of the main system, actively and boldly adopt the latest computer products and adopt the latest software technology. The popularity of these devices not only reduces the service cost of banks, but also greatly improves the service quality.
-complete functions and perfect services. Developed countries have established three levels of information systems. First of all, the internal information system of the financial industry is mainly the processing system of the internal business of the bank based on bank accounting, that is, the advanced and coordinated counter service network and the bank management information system network aiming at bank management. Secondly, the information system between the financial industry, with the frequent exchanges between various businesses, the transfer and settlement business such as checks and drafts between banks has risen sharply, and the settlement of funds has been handled in a timely and effective manner, which has become an important measure to improve the efficiency of bank management. To this end, banks in developed countries have established a unified and standardized fund settlement system to achieve fast and safe fund settlement. For example, Federal Reserve Funds Transfer System (FEDWIRE), Bank of Japan Financial Network System (BOJ—NET), American Clearing Bank Interbank Payment System (CHIPS) and Global Financial Communication Network (SWIFT). The establishment of these systems not only reduces the transaction cost and speeds up the transaction, but also provides customers with various new banking services. Finally, in the information system between the financial industry and customers, banks have launched various automated services for the public, and established an automated customer service system network, including establishing enterprise banks between financial institutions and corporate customers, establishing telephone banks and family banks between financial institutions and the public, and providing customers with various comprehensive and diverse financial services through various terminals.
-High degree of automation, strong security and confidentiality. At present, large-scale network information systems in western developed countries have a good legal environment, a standardized charging rule system, and various security measures in software and hardware, such as hardware backup and software encryption of host systems and communication systems. , can avoid all kinds of unsafe factors to the maximum extent.
Moreover, with the further obvious trend of economic globalization, the financial industry in developed countries is increasingly dependent on information technology. Today, more than half of the world's large financial enterprises are doing business all over the world. For example, branches, subsidiaries, subsidiaries, joint ventures and offices of Citigroup are scattered in more than 0/00 countries around the world. In addition, financial innovation has become the main factor to reflect the core competitiveness of financial enterprises, and 95% of financial innovation is extremely dependent on information technology, which is helpful to analyze the pricing of complex financial products and conduct risk management, making it possible to trade these products. Therefore, financial globalization has become a major trend in the development of international financial industry. (catalpa stem) (People's Posts and Telecommunications)
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