According to Wikipedia's definition, Fintech, the abbreviation of financial technology, means financial technology, which refers to a kind of company that drives financial innovation with technology and perfects the financial system with technology, thus improving the efficiency of financial services and reducing operating costs, and improving the efficiency of financial business through emerging technologies.
However, this explanation is still abstract. People have different understandings of specific technical and financial forms. I tend to think that science and technology is a cutting-edge and dynamic concept. A technology may be advanced and breakthrough when it first appears, and then it develops rapidly and iteratively, and a large number of related products and services emerge. After that, the technology gradually took shape and entered a mature stage, and after the emergence of alternative technologies, it entered a recession.
When a technology enters the second half, it is hard to say whether the company developing this technology is a leading technology company. For example, Internet technology is already a very mature technology, and the threshold for research and development is already very low. Building a website or an APP is not a technology company.
Therefore, as far as technology and finance are concerned, it is not a financial technology company that uses software and networks to transmit information, nor is it a financial technology company that builds a network platform to communicate investment and financing. A real financial technology company is an enterprise that uses current cutting-edge technologies, such as big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other technologies, to effectively improve the efficiency of financial business, or to complete tasks that cannot be completed under traditional conditions.
With the development of the times, in a few years, technologies such as big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence will become common technologies, and the marginal effect of improving financial efficiency will tend to zero, which will be replaced by new technologies that can improve financial efficiency. At that time, the standards of financial technology companies needed to be redefined.
Financial technology is not a whim.
Fintech is a new word, but the intersection of technology and finance is not the first time. In fact, technology and finance are like a couple. In the history of development, they never left and collided with many sparks. Science and technology have changed the face of finance, and the development of finance has deepened the demand for science and technology. The two complement each other and achieve each other.
Since 1970s and 1980s, the computer software and hardware industry has gradually taken shape, and the popularization of information technology has accelerated, which opened the first close contact between technology and finance. At this stage, finance has realized the electronic transmission of information, and electronic bookkeeping has replaced manual bookkeeping, which has unprecedentedly improved the efficiency of information transmission and greatly promoted the evolution of financial formats.
In the 1990s, the Internet began to rise and entered the lives of a large number of netizens. Technology and application began to mature, opening up a virtual network space to transmit information, making information and data transmission between financial institutions more convenient and further improving financial efficiency.
Since 2008, social media has become more and more active, and the mobile Internet is also on the rise, greatly improving the data level. At this time, technologies such as cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence began to take off, and they entered the commercial market, which brought great changes to finance. At this time, science and technology provide excellent quantitative analysis techniques and tools for finance, which makes financial decision-making more scientific and refined, and finance begins to move towards intelligence and digitalization. And some new models, such as online credit, online financial management, online consumer finance, crowdfunding and other models are also emerging;
It can be seen that every era has financial technology of every era. But at present, people begin to use financial technology to refer to the combination of cutting-edge technology and finance. At present, the concept of Fintech rises because some enterprises speculate through science and technology. However, the rise of technology and finance concept is based on the application of big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other technologies in the financial field, and gradually reflects its unique value.
What are the technical and financial applications of Fintech today?
At present, technologies that are showing efficiency improvement effects in the financial field mainly include big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and blockchain. At present, it has been applied in peer-to-peer lending, consumer finance, online financial management, crowdfunding, credit reporting, internet insurance, internet securities and other fields, and used in product development, customer acquisition, risk control, IT system construction, after-sales management and other links. Technology and application are not simple one-to-one correspondence or one-to-many correspondence. Often a technology is used in many applications, and an application will use many cutting-edge technologies.
big data
The fiery heat of big data has been going on for several years, and it is also the most extensive and mature technology category that combines finance and technology. Through the collection, storage, cleaning, calculation and analysis of data resources, the commercial value of useful data resources can be brought into play, and business growth can be driven by data discovery rules.
In many aspects of finance, big data technology can play a role. The customer acquisition link can achieve more accurate user acquisition and product recommendation through big data; In the process of product design, user needs can be discovered through big data to enhance the user experience; At present, the biggest role is still in the risk control link. By obtaining the data authorized by users, the data of third parties and the data of all users (such as social media data), we can make a comprehensive portrait of users, build a precise algorithm model, comprehensively manage the risks of assets and funds, and reduce the probability of risks.
In the field of payment, big data can determine the risk level. Taking Alipay as an example, the data show that it has built an intelligent real-time risk monitoring system (CTU system), which carries out self-learning of rules through data analysis and data mining, automatically updates and improves the risk monitoring strategy, judges the risk level based on user behavior, and integrates risk analysis, early warning and control. In the field of online lending, many top platforms have their own risk control models to judge the risk of loans. Taking Ai Qianjin as an example, a big data quantitative risk control system "Cloud Map Dynamic Risk Control System" is constructed, and a risk control knowledge system is formed by linking internal and external diversified data sources through technologies such as machine learning and natural language processing, so as to achieve high efficiency and accuracy in the incoming inspection process. In the field of consumer finance, taking JD.COM Baitiao as an example, a weakly classified combination forecasting model composed of various big data machine learning models is formed. With the help of random forest, lasso regression and other algorithms, with reference to thousands of predictive variables, the repayment willingness and repayment ability of users are evaluated. In addition, big data has a wide range of practical applications in insurance scenario design, online credit reporting and other fields.
cloud computing
The combination of cloud computing and finance produces financial cloud company, which provides basic IT architecture services based on cloud for financial institutions, helps financial enterprises to migrate their business to the cloud, reduces IT procurement costs, and realizes a flexible IT environment that can be quickly realized and delivered. For example, Alibaba Rongyun and Tencent Financial Cloud not only provide cloud service support for their own financial business, but also serve a large number of traditional financial customers, and begin to build an ecosystem based on cloud services.
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is still in the early stage of development, but it has been applied in many fields such as finance, education and medical care, showing its potential. In the financial field, the applications of artificial intelligence currently include automatic generation of research reports, forecast analysis, market research/market sentiment analysis, search engines, quantitative transactions, account collection, artificial intelligence assistants, fraud detection, credit scoring, personal banking, blockchain and so on.
Relatively speaking, the most eye-catching application at present is intelligent investment, which constructs data models through algorithms, uses artificial intelligence technology and network platform to formulate investment portfolios for users, and provides financial advisory services. At present, at least 20 platforms claim to have launched or are launching smart investment services, including JD.COM, Baidu, CreditEase and many venture mutual fund companies. Licensed fund companies also have related products under development.
blockchain
Blockchain technology is considered to be a subversive technology, which has attracted great attention in the financial industry and the government. Revolutionary algorithms and decentralized design make people feel that blockchain is an underlying architecture system that subverts the existing pattern. At present, the application of blockchain is still in a very primary stage. Bitcoin is a relatively mature application, but at present it is only investment and speculation, and its impact on the real economy has not yet emerged.
Blockchain-based payment, especially cross-border payment, is gradually becoming a hot spot for entrepreneurship. For example, Circle, which Baidu and IDG participated in in in June, provides payment and clearing services based on blockchain technology, and realizes low-cost currency exchange and cross-border exchange with the support of blockchain technology. At present, the exchange of USD, GBP and Bitcoin has been supported.
To sum up, there are numerous applications of financial technology, both virtual and real. Relatively speaking, big data risk control plays the greatest role in promoting the development of mutual funds, becoming the main selling point different from traditional finance, and also becoming the core competitiveness of mutual funds to challenge traditional financial models; Financial cloud is a relatively real service, which is to reduce the operating costs of financial enterprises; Intelligent investment is the hottest new Fintech model at present. By lowering the threshold of investment consulting service through artificial intelligence technology, every ordinary user can get customized investment consulting service, but it will take time to test whether the technical ability can reach the goal.
This wave of Fintech craze is essentially a data revolution.
Judging from the current Fintech technology and application, this wave of Fintech craze is essentially related to data, which is a revolution brought about by the progress of data application and algorithm. Cloud computing technology realizes the distributed storage and calculation of big data; Big data technology reflects the commercial information and potential value contained in data through analysis and mining; Artificial intelligence conducts black-box testing based on massive data to improve the degree of intelligence and allow machines to provide more efficient services instead of labor; Blockchain provides a new type of database ledger to realize point-to-point data transmission.
Information and data have always been the core elements of finance. At present, Fintech takes data as the core, gives full play to the value of data, and solves the problems of storage, value mining and use of massive data and how to use it more efficiently, thus providing financial services with lower cost, higher value and long tail, improving the efficiency of financial operation and solving the problems that the financial industry could not solve in the past.
Being over-hyped is not Fintech's own problem.
Financial technology is undoubtedly meaningful, but at present, the concept of technology and finance seems to be over-hyped. All kinds of mutual fund companies are calling themselves financial technology companies. Fintech seems to be a bad street concept again, but this should not be blamed on financial technology itself. The problem lies in our impetuous business environment.
Financial technology itself is still in the early stage of development, and it is difficult to falsify, and its effect needs to be tested by the market. At the same time, there are too many speculators in the mutual gold industry, and the heavy pressure of supervision comes quietly on 20 16. For several reasons, mutual gold practitioners over-hyped Fintech. This highlights the impetuous atmosphere of the current mutual gold circle. For Fintech, things are good things, but after being over-consumed, it will inevitably lead to aesthetic fatigue. In the end, Fintech's stunt may not win the trust of users.
The noise of speculation will eventually pass, but the mode of improving financial efficiency by science and technology will not end. The real technology platform will eventually win in the competition.
How to judge whether an enterprise is a financial technology company?
For investors, how to judge whether a mutual fund enterprise is a financial technology company? It seems difficult. Finally, it depends on the results and data. Whether the online loan enterprises reduce the default rate to a low level through big data risk control, whether the cloud services provided by financial cloud enterprises attract enough users, whether they effectively reduce the operating costs of financial customers, and whether the investment services provided by intelligent investment through artificial intelligence technology provide a high rate of return within the risk range that users can bear, these are specific criteria. Mutual gold companies that only say that they have strong R&D strength, how many R&D personnel and how many technology giants have joined, but never mention technological achievements, are probably more gimmicks to speculate on financial technology.
In addition, high-profile mutual gold companies that claim to actively deploy an emerging technology are often hype gimmicks. Whether a real financial technology company invests in developing a certain technology needs to combine the product strategy of the enterprise itself and improve the service efficiency and user experience through technology, rather than devoting itself to a certain technology. Linking technologies that have little to do with your product strategy with yourself is either hype or not thinking clearly about what to do.
What will Fintech do next?
With the survival of the fittest in market competition, it is expected that the hype of financial technology will gradually recede, but the promotion and promotion of science and technology to finance will continue. The impact and role of technologies such as big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and blockchain on finance will be long-term.
On the one hand, these technologies are in the early stage of development, and there are still many places that need to be improved, such as the analysis and processing of unstructured data, the improvement of artificial intelligence cognitive ability, and the data security of cloud services, which need to be solved with the change of technology; On the other hand, the combination of these technologies and finance is still in the primary stage, and the maturity and universality of application need to be improved. Under this long-term influence, technology will be gradually improved and the efficiency and ability of financial services will be greatly improved.
In addition, some new technologies will be gradually added to financial technology to improve the efficiency and boundary of financial services. Such as VR/AR, Internet of Things, etc. Virtual reality can be applied to virtual roadshows and other scenes to eliminate the information asymmetry caused by physical distance; The Internet of Things will bring the Internet of Everything, and the amount of data will greatly increase. The high-frequency terminals used by users will not be limited to mobile phones and computers. The provision of financial services will have more scene references and unexpected changes in service forms.