In recent years, the securities industry not only seeks business intelligence and business model innovation with the help of external forces, but also magnifies the value of financial technology by increasing investment in information technology and other fields with the help of endogenous kinetic energy.
Brokers join hands with external forces to "borrow a boat to go to sea"
Recently, orient securities announced the official launch of its first commercial cooperation with Microsoft. The two sides will cooperate in artificial intelligence products, solutions and cloud services, the first stage of which is to build an artificial intelligence infrastructure platform.
In fact, orient securities has made great efforts to seek external financial technology. For example, orient securities cooperated with Shanghai Jiaotong University to set up an artificial intelligence and big data laboratory, cooperated deeply with Huawei in the field of cloud computing, and cooperated successfully with Alibaba Cloud in the application of scene ai.
At present, the strategic play of securities firms joining hands with Internet giants is also different.
One is to directly guide Internet companies to make strategic investments as shareholders, so as to achieve deep business integration. For example, CICC (Hong Kong stock 03908) signed a subscription agreement with Tencent in September, 2017. Tencent, as a strategic investor and major shareholder, helped its financial technology layout, and the two sides established a technology company through joint venture. In addition to CICC, Huatai Securities also introduced Alibaba as a strategic shareholder two years ago, and the two sides improved financial services in data value mining and big data system construction.
The other is strategic cooperation. 2065438+September 2009, Caitong Securities signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Alibaba Cloud and Ant Financial. The three parties will combine extensive technical accumulation and practical experience in the fields of big data, intelligence and infrastructure to promote financial technology innovation.
However, some brokers believe that due to the fierce competition between technology and finance, if it is difficult for brokers to incubate technology and R&D capabilities in a short time, they will choose to introduce information flow giants to cooperate, but there are problems such as late admission time, poor coordination and less than expected integration.
Internal efforts of securities firms to transform traditional business
There is no doubt that financial technology is gradually infiltrating into brokers and changing their traditional business.
A person from a brokerage business department in South China said that the industry is improving its internal operational efficiency through the layout of APP and smart middle platform, and the mobile Internet business framework has begun to take shape. "On the one hand, there are more and more functional modules on the mobile side of brokers, further customizing diversified and personalized services. On the other hand, technical empowerment enables the staff system and customer system of securities firms to be completely connected, and valuable information can be quickly pushed. Whether it is internal collaboration or external customer base, it depends on the application of technologies such as big data and cloud computing. "
It is not difficult to see that on October 8th, 65438/kloc-0, GF Securities (Hong Kong stock 0 1776) launched the industry's first "dual edition" APP for securities trading and securities financing. Among them, the securities trading model can meet the comprehensive investment trading needs of customers, and the securities financing model can meet the professional financing needs of wealth management customers. It is understood that China Merchants Securities (Hong Kong stock 06099) and Essence Securities have recently made important updates to the APP version.
Relevant persons of Ping An Securities said that the company has achieved rapid digitalization in investment, investment banking and institutional services. Taking "scientific investment" as an example, Ping An Securities has formed a wisdom center in the securities service chain, making it more data-based through the application of technology, forming a closed loop of customer data analysis, customer behavior, customer transactions, customer suggestions and customer service, providing users with service solutions for various investment products and promoting the transformation and upgrading of the company's brokerage business.
The relevant person in charge of Ping An Securities analyzed that financial technology reduces marginal costs and covers long-tail customers; Reconstruct data processing mode to improve service efficiency; Optimize user experience and enhance customer stickiness. In the wave of financial technology, the investment of securities companies in R&D is increasing, and the IT team is growing. "Ping An Group spends 1% of its revenue on scientific research and development every year, and has invested more than10 billion yuan in innovative technologies in the past decade. The securities sector will take advantage of the Group's scientific and technological advantages to empower science and technology and accelerate its progress towards first-class brokers. "
It is worth noting that more head brokers choose to strengthen endogenous kinetic energy and enhance the independent research and development capability of financial technology.
It is reported that China Merchants Securities is one of the few brokers in the industry who independently develop centralized trading systems. The enterprise-level development framework XFramework is built independently, which realizes the efficient development of the whole process from visual front-end, access, micro-service to background business, and deeply controls the open source software and key components.
"For example, we set up an institutional trading service platform for the first time in the industry, using FPGA technology to accelerate market making, supporting microsecond-level fast trading, covering the whole process of the all-asset management platform, and leading the industry in overall performance. At present, China Merchants Securities has built an independent, controllable and industry-leading personal business platform, institutional business platform and investment banking business platform. " According to the relevant person in charge of China Merchants Securities.
The relevant person in charge of the above-mentioned China Merchants Securities believes that "technology may be the only force that can fundamentally change and subvert the business model of the securities industry in the future, and the application of financial technology has become the most important track and competitive weapon to enhance customer experience and gain competitive advantage."
The person in charge of the information technology department of GF Securities said that in the future, brokers need to combine technology and financial business scenarios to deeply explore the application value of technology in business scenarios. "Through independent research and development of products, we will form core competitiveness and barriers in specific fields, and even earn income by exporting scientific and technological services."
"Science and technology brain" reshapes the industry pattern
More and more people in the industry realize that "technology brain" will accelerate industry differentiation.
However, most brokers also pointed out that compared with overseas international investment banks, domestic brokers still have a big gap in financial technology innovation and investment, technology and business integration, and financial technology ecological construction.
"Recently, the zero commission model of overseas brokers has had a great psychological impact on the industry. Behind it is actually the optimization of trading system, accurate customer portrait and database system, providing diversified financial products and services for customer groups. By removing the dependence on pure brokerage business, the business models of these brokers have also changed. Under the development of financial technology, small brokers who cannot bear the pressure of price war will withdraw from the market, and the industry concentration will be greatly improved. " The above-mentioned South China brokerage business department said.
According to the analysis of the relevant person in charge of Industrial Securities, the main difficulty in the current financial technology layout of the brokerage industry lies in the exploration of new business models and business scenarios. For example, artificial intelligence has been widely used in many traditional fields of securities firms, but there are still few valuable business scenarios, which requires the industry to think and explore new application scenarios. "In the future, brokers will form a competitive advantage in the field of financial technology. After the relevant advantageous technologies are serviced and productized, the technology will likely change from the' input' of brokers to the' output'."
The above-mentioned brokers suggest that there are two ways for domestic brokers to develop financial technology. First, head brokers introduce technical resources by integrating external technology giants to promote the potential growth of business lines such as brokerage and investment banking. At the same time, we will build a sound technical framework and industry ecology and continue to export technology to the industry. Second, small and medium-sized brokers can play a differentiated strategy and seek overtaking in corners in the tide of competition between technology and finance.
Yan Xu, chairman of Cai Xiang Securities, once wrote: "We can foresee that the existing field of artificial asset management will be completely subverted in the near future. Securities companies will make a strategic transformation from license-centric to service-centric, and empower business innovation through technology, thus bringing about new changes in business profit model. "
This article is from China Fund.