Since 2000, there have been five major global crises: the Internet bubble in 2000, the September 11 attacks in 2001, the SARS virus in 2003, the financial crisis in 2008, and the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020. The crisis caused huge economic losses to society, enterprises and individuals, but it also created opportunities for excellent companies and brought development to the survival of the fittest companies. Digital transformation has become the enterprise development needs, how should enterprises look for opportunities in the crisis, creditease CTO Xiang Jiangxu through the crisis creditease’s exploration and practice, to the unique perspective of science and technology to share how enterprises successfully achieve digital transformation.
Survival of the fittest
In 2000, the fiber optic and communications industries were hit hard, while a new generation of Internet companies rose rapidly, such as Google and Facebook. In 2001, insurance companies paid out about $40 billion because of the attacks, but shares in defence technology and pharmaceuticals rose, and telecommuting and videoconferencing were all the rage. When SARS broke out in 2003, the offline real economy was hit hard, but e-commerce companies grew rapidly. In 2008, the financial crisis led to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, while risk control work was particularly hot, bank of America, Wells Fargo and other traditional financial institutions even invested billions of dollars to recruit technical personnel, build digital technology.
In a crisis, it is not the normally strong companies that survive, but the fittest that thrive. At the same time, we can see that finance and science and technology are twin brothers. The crisis is first reflected in the financial market, and then these enterprises have a strong demand for science and technology. So no matter financial company or non-financial company, when the crisis comes, technological ability and digital ability will be the foundation of its survival. As Tang Ning, CEO of CreditEase, said, “Technology doesn’t replace you, technology will replace you.” Therefore, financial companies must have their own technology teams and core technology capabilities, and make good use of technology enabling business.
Collaborate to build an innovation ecosystem
Under the circumstances of stricter regulation, licensed operation, stock market slump and economic shock, the entire financial industry has entered a new stage of transformation — from product-centered to customer-centered.
The crushing effect and scale effect of giants are also rapidly emerging. Internet companies can make use of their resource endowment to cross over and obtain financial licenses, and then provide financial services through users, traffic, scale and consumption scenes. However, traditional financial companies represented by banks, insurance and securities, and fintech companies represented by Creditease are in a state of three-phase superposition. In this situation, digital transformation and innovation require a special solution — the innovation ecosphere.
No matter what kind of company does digital transformation, it means the competition of talents, users, scenes and even culture. So we hope to use the strengths of these different types of companies to complement each other and form a fintech innovation ecosystem. Traditional financial company’s core financial service ability and the strong capital advantage, combined with the financial technology innovation ability and the ability of science and technology, the capture of user scenarios and energized and technology together, form the core of the internal resources, innovation incubation and external cooperation, and strategic investment ability, so as to establish an end-to-end innovation ecosystem, Make model innovation, business innovation and scientific and technological innovation more systematic, regular and sustainable. The innovation ecosystem also enables different types of companies in the industry to find their roles and positioning, accelerating the success of technological innovation and digital transformation of the entire industry.
Technology enables enterprises to release capacity
Our economic life is slowing down under the pandemic, but digital transformation is accelerating. Take CreditEase as an example. After the outbreak of the epidemic, the science and technology center quickly responded to the company’s decision to make all staff work from home, and put in full effort to deploy telecommute, expand server capacity, increase VPN equipment and improve security measures. In just a few days, the online working capacity of creditEase increased from thousands to tens of thousands.
Working from home has become more productive, not less, and telecommuting has allowed us to stretch the boundaries of our offices, whether at work, in the car at home, on high-speed trains or on airplanes. Therefore, there are two trends in the future. One is that no matter when and where employees are, they can work together for internal operation and management. One is that users can connect digitally whenever and wherever they are.
In February this year, through the way of science and technology enabling creditease wealth business performance has bucked the trend of growth. The performance has increased by a large proportion compared with last year. So technology not only enables business innovation and digital transformation, but also helps unlock potential and capacity.
Technology helps marketing go digital
The digital transformation of enterprises also promotes the digitalization of marketing and the realization of online marketing for everyone. Firstly, technical analysis of user portraits, such as investment expectation, risk preference and financial planning cycle, is carried out to help financial planners better understand customers and then recommend more appropriate financial products and asset allocation to customers with different needs.
For example, creditEase financial planner APP can accurately capture customers’ interest preferences, content labels, reading duration and other information through articles, pictures and videos forwarded by customer managers, so as to help financial planners accurately insight into users’ needs and improve conversion rates.
The second is live streaming. This period of time, creditease wealth to do a lot of live. The high-quality live broadcast content not only facilitates the conversion of users, conversion of new customers and re-investment of old customers, but also establishes a sense of trust with customers and makes customers feel trustworthy and professional.
Science and technology make finance more inclusive. The essence of digital finance is to make finance better serve more people and make more people enjoy personalized and scenario-based financial services. As for the future development trend of fintech, Xiang Jiangxu believes that enterprises that meet the real needs of customers will have space for survival and development. We have confidence in innovative enterprises and technologies that are flexible, innovative and meet the needs of users in the market. The crisis makes this kind of demand advance and magnify, who can meet this kind of demand of customers, who can win in the crisis, even become 20% of the stronger and stronger enterprises. The digital capability of finance is the underlying code that helps companies survive the crisis and become strong.