the bund summit｜“touch it” and discover more possibilities of future financial technology
2024-09-08
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every city has its landmarks. one of shanghai's landmarks is the bund. today, the bund summit has given it a new meaning. the asia technology daily calls the bund summit one of the "most anticipated global innovation and technology conferences in the second half of 2024". the outside world's attention to it lies in the "voice of the times" of financial technology development conveyed by the summit, and also in the connection between china and the world through digital elements.
the three-day 2024 inclusion·bund conference came to a close yesterday, attracting a total of 52,000 on-site attendees, setting a historical record in both the scale of attendees and the number of international guests; 105 global technology companies participated in the exhibition, 35 scientific and technological achievements were released, and more than 1,000 cooperation intentions were reached... the bund conference provided a "dialog box" based in shanghai, looking forward to the present and future development of global financial technology.
technology may be the disruptor of the financial industry
daniela, a european student, turned on his mobile phone screen and bought coffee by "touching" it on the machine. he was surprised by this innovative payment method that he had never seen before. "it's a bit like nfc (near field communication) payment, but it's not. it's much simpler than qr code payment."
at the bund conference this year, "touch and go" was seen everywhere, which is also the latest technological achievement of china's financial technology giant. if we trace back, the last wave of qr code payment began around 2011. "it took at least 10 years for qr code payment to be popularized. after going through the difficulties of promoting it one by one, it finally proved its strength and made china's mobile payment user coverage rate reach 86%, becoming the world's number one." said li jiajia, vice president of alipay. after tasting the sweetness of technology empowerment, the promotion speed of "touch and go" was extremely fast. the number of customers in the two months after it went online was 6 times that of face recognition payment in the same period.
from traditional atms and credit cards to qr code payments and now “touch and pay”, technology plays an increasingly important role in finance. it also makes more financial practitioners realize that it may not be their peers who truly disrupt the development of the industry, but technology workers, just like openai’s overnight success, which has brought artificial intelligence (ai) to a new development track.
this is also the significance of the bund summit - to build a top-level dialogue platform on the banks of the huangpu river, allowing top experts and scholars in the two major fields of technology and finance to fully communicate and exchange ideas, and explore and discover more possibilities for future financial technology.
in the wave of ai, financial development and technological innovation have become closer. the financial big models released one after another at the bund conference are an example. hengsheng juyuan is a data company. it has been doing one thing since 2000-structuring the data and then gathering it on the desktops of institutional investors, researchers, and fund managers. ten years ago, they also made knowledge graphs. but it was not until the end of 2022 when the big model appeared that companies discovered that the speed of manual work could not keep up with the speed of machine evolution. as a result, the company turned its guns and launched the "voice control wanshu" financial big model internally, and developed an intelligent investment research workbench warrenq based on the big model and middleware. in the view of general manager wu zhencao, in the financial field, data is always the most important point, but because of technology, the process of integrating data into knowledge will be completely subverted.
global institutions are also optimistic about financial intelligence. steve hoffman, founder and ceo of founders space, found that in the financial field, there has been a debate between open source and closed source large language models. the former encourages innovation through collaboration, while the latter emphasizes security and self-developed technology. there is no answer to the debate, but one thing is certain: ai-enabled intelligent entities have changed the way financial advisors serve their clients, and will continue to change in the future.
as globalism accelerates, the “shanghai model” is gaining attention
"the world's mobile phones, laptops, and all data servers are connected into a huge computing system, like a technology-based super organism." futurist and founding editor of wired magazine kevin kelly asserted at the opening forum of the bund conference: globalism will be accelerated as a result.
fintech is the commanding height of competition in the process of advancing globalism, bringing new possibilities for the inclusiveness of finance on a global scale.
as an international financial center, shanghai is tirelessly exploring examples of inclusive financial technology. wang weiyu, founder of shanghai jigao information technology co., ltd., told a story. the chicme brand she founded is popular in mature markets such as europe and the united states, and has begun to expand into emerging markets such as latin america. the demand for payment convenience, credibility, and financing services is becoming more and more obvious. and wanlihui, which started in shanghai, has given her solid support. the latter can support merchants to open global multi-currency accounts in more than 200 countries and regions, helping companies sell globally through a set of accounts.
"in the first half of this year, the transaction volume of shanghai's local micro-multinational enterprises increased by more than 50% year-on-year." shi wenyi, ceo of wanlihui, said that the opening of financial "capillaries" has provided a continuous source of power for the development of new business forms such as offshore trade, cross-border e-commerce, and overseas warehouses for these companies.
at the bund summit, similar "shanghai samples" attracted global attention. hsbc wealth management and personal banking global transaction banking director ho mcgao was thinking about mobile innovations in traditional financial institutions. he found that small and micro entrepreneurs have a special liking for mobile technology. "we are constantly developing new settlement and data analysis functions in banking software to meet the needs of small businesses, helping them to move goods, commodities and funds."
one of the characteristics of technological innovation is to bridge the gap between regions, which is of special significance in cross-border scenarios. the "shanghai sample" also inspired zhang shenyuan, founder and ceo of dana, a leading payment company in indonesia. he thought of many local small businesses that want to go global, but they find it difficult to "break the circle" because of high technology costs, poor language skills, and inconvenient payments. "if there is an open cooperation system, there will be an opportunity to build a seamless digital technology support system, so that ordinary people can also have access to the best tools."
the best window to observe china's ai industry practices
fintech is an important entry point and focus for shanghai to build itself into an international financial center and a science and technology innovation center. the implementation plan for accelerating the construction of shanghai's fintech center, issued in january 2020, clearly states that it will take five years to build shanghai into a globally competitive fintech center.
over the years, shanghai has been accelerating towards this goal and has achieved initial results: financial technology unicorns have gathered, and shanghai companies account for nearly 40% of the 2024 forbes china's top 50 most influential financial technology companies, ranking first in the country; the new quality productivity of financial technology has developed rapidly, the digital rmb pilot has landed nearly 2 million application scenarios, and launched a number of first-time featured businesses, and the capital market financial technology innovation pilot has launched 28 projects in the first batch, ranking first in the country. at the same time, shanghai has established a financial technology industry organization, launched talent certification projects such as chartered financial technology engineers, and cooperated with nearly 30 financial institutions, training more than 40,000 students in total, and more than 5,000 students have participated in examinations and certifications.
looking to the future, shanghai has more goals:
using technology to explore the forefront of financial innovation. jiang changjun, an academician of the chinese academy of engineering and a professor at the school of electronic and information engineering of tongji university, is leading a team to develop a financial big model and has reached a consensus that the financial application of big models should refer to the "three horizontal and two vertical" key paths. the "three horizontal" paths are to g (for the government or public sector), to b (for enterprises) and to c (for individual consumers), and the "two vertical" paths are to find development opportunities for the future and ensure the security of big models.
establish the rules of the game in financial technology with standards. the industry's first large-scale model supply chain security international standard "large-scale model supply chain security requirements", the first domestic "ai face-changing" detection standard for financial scenarios "fake digital face detection financial application technical specifications" ... provide a basis for security testing and evaluation in financial scenarios, filling the gap in the industry.
the system will depict a grand blueprint for future development. the "shanghai high-quality action plan for promoting the construction of a global financial technology center" will be launched soon. shanghai is still making continuous efforts to promote technological innovation from "following" to "leading", to promote resource aggregation from "advantage" to "winning advantage", and to promote talent training from "base" to "highland".
"the bund summit is the best window to observe the practices of china's ai industry." jiang kaiming, vice president of the american chamber of commerce in shanghai and senior partner of tidal wave, has long been concerned about china's macro-economy. he hopes to find the best path for the implementation of the ai industry here.
author: xu jinghui
text: our reporter xu jinghui photo: ic editor: shi wei
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