On the afternoon of 17 October 2019, the Faculty of Finance of CityU held the seminar China Life-Guangfa Joint Lecture Series | Integration of Financial and Technology - Digital Transformation in Banking in Room HG03, Ho Yin Convention Centre. Mr Xiao Zhihua, Deputy Manager of Information Technology Department was invited as the keynote speaker.
Mr Xiao delivered the lecture in three sections, including the development of financial technology, practice and reflection, as well as future challenges. He first introduced the vigorous development of the Internet, and compared the size of netizens, the Internet availability rate, the size of mobile netizens and their proportion in all netizens. According to the statistic data on China's Internet development status issued by the China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC), there are currently a total of 828 million Internet users in China. Mobile payment, online shopping, online wealth management and car sharing have been greatly promoted, while more than 90% of banking services are now covered by online channels. The development of financial technology has also transitioned from informatization to intelligentization. As such, the integration of finance and technology has become the mainstream. The digital transformation of global economy represents the general trend, and the new industrial revolution will profoundly reshape the human society. New technologies will facilitate fintech innovation. New Internet technologies, including cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, have become the main driving force for fintech innovation. Customers require real-time, online and scenario-based integrated financial services to facilitate their daily life. Financial institutions should establish digital business models and service systems based on customer-oriented service to provide customers with deeply integrated and comprehensive online services on all fronts.
Afterwards, Mr Xiao also shared how to "build an open bank", and discussed several cases including the intelligent collection, intelligent sub-account and intelligent kindergarten platform. Lastly, he pointed out that banks are fully boosting their digital transformation: ICBC has put forward the "Smart Bank" strategy and initiated the building of ECOS; ABC has explicitly proposed to "build another online Agricultural Bank of China" to actively promote online business; with a clear strategic objective of building a "fintech bank", China Merchants Bank has also proposed a milestone strategy of "marching towards the Phase 3.0 business model"; Ping An Bank is comprehensively promoting the building of AI BANK.
Teachers and students discussed a number of interesting topics with the guest speaker, including risk control, risks of using biotechnology, big data and information protection, and remodelling of service system. The seminar concluded with a pleasant exchange.
