Around 2013 and 2014, “Technology leads finance, financial service life” has become Ping An’s primary strategy, and it has really been put into action.
Editor’s note: This article is from the micro-channel public number “Fintech rice pudding” (ID: zhouqiwenzhou) , Author: The eight treasure porridge of Fintech.
The financial industry is old and young.
3,700 years ago, the Hammurabi Code recorded the annualized loan interest rates for silver and grain. This is the first written civil code in the history of known letters, and this is the first official record of finance.
In the long years since then, the pulse of financial innovation has been hidden in the long course of history. Accompanying it, currency, bonds, insurance, stocks, funds, and even future digital currency … gradually become a measure of human social value.
For thousands of years, technological progress has been an important driving force for financial innovation. Among them are Chinese abacus, Franklin’s printing press, Morse’s telegraph, and even more widely used commercial computers and mobile internet for nearly half a century.
In the past more than ten years, technology has pushed human society into the digital era at an unprecedented speed and intensity.
Today, the role of technology in finance is indisputable. But what about the transformation of financial institutions?
Technology is undoubtedly the key to digital transformation, but it is not necessarily the key issue.
In recent years, when talking about the digital transformation of financial institutions, we must talk about the rise of the safe empire.
Because of the rise of the empire, there must be a cross-section of complex factors and a sea of vicissitudes of hearts.
At the end of 2018, Ping An changed the “insurance, banking, investment” in the logo to “finance, technology”.
Because of financial technology, there must be technology and finance, and a fusion of the two.
So, to decode the peace, you may wish to follow Mr. Huang Renyu’s “Fifteen Years of Wanli”, using financial technology as an entry point, looking back at some people and things in 2014, and restoring the truth of history with details and facts for reference In the past, let future generations follow the trend and avoid the trend.
01
Ping An 2014
The annual reports of listed companies are in fact the chronicles of enterprises.
Management speech is to highlight the company’s structure and vision, and reflect the development strategy and tactics.
Different from the president’s speechMr. Ma Mingzhe, chairman and CEO of Ping An, has a very plain text and a very standardized structure. There must be an outline in the opening chapter, such as Taishi Gong said, the year when the Tao is between pitch and sorrow and joy. In the early years, the text was always printed in the orange symbol of the Ping An symbol, which is quite a bit like a sun.
Picture: Message from the Chairman of the 2014 Ping An Annual Report (from Ping An Annual Report)
2014 is the tenth year of Ping An’s listing.
In ten years, Ping An ’s compound growth rate of total assets exceeded 30%, and the compound growth rate of earnings per share reached 24%. The subject of Mr. Ma’s speech this year was “change and change”. He said that change is strategy and platform, and what is unchanged is the belief of “survive in competition and development in innovation”.
Safety did change in 2014.
Ping An changed its position from a leading personal financial services group in China to an international leading personal financial life service provider. From China to international, from finance to life, the category of customers has changed, and the boundaries of safe business have changed.
There are also three major changes:
One is the change of the strategic system. The initially formed “one door, two focuses, and four markets” constitute the link of scenes, data, and services.
In 2014, the total number of Ping An Internet users reached 137 million. “One door” connects various application scenarios through “any door”, “two focuses” on big data mining, analysis and application of asset management and health management. One-stop financial life service system composed of automobile transactions and real estate financial markets.
The second is the change of tactical heavy equipment. Lufax, Wanlitong, Yitongtong, Ping An Good Car, and Ping An Paying the new generation payment system have built a growth pole for future expansion.
In 2014, Ping An ’s major Internet financial services were all in scale. Lufax has more than 5 million users, and the transaction scale ranks first in the Chinese market; Wanlitong users exceed 70 million, and the annual points issued are 1.959 billion yuan. The number of online and offline cooperative merchants exceeds 500,000, and the transaction scale is nearly 5 billion yuan; There are 40.36 million users of OneAccount; Ping An Good Car has become China’s largest C2B auto trading platform; Ping An Pay’s new generation payment system has been completed, providing a core payment platform for the Internet financial layout.
The third is the change of business layout, the effect of customer migration is significant, and the level of cross-sellingRise, the comprehensive financial territory is ready.
Ping An established an integrated financial product view and customer big data analysis platform, completed the group user experience panorama planning, developed innovative integrated financial portfolio products and services, promoted customer migration, and improved cross-selling. In terms of core financial business, Ping An migrated approximately 7.02 million customers in 2014, and 26% of the total new customers of the subsidiaries within the group came from customer migration. More than 1.2 million new customers have migrated from Internet finance to core financial services.
The changes in the strategic layout, tactical heavy equipment, and business layout in 2014 are described in the annual report. There are still some changes that are not listed in the annual report, but they gradually show up in time.
On New Year’s Day 2014, Ma Mingzhe’s speech to all employees was titled “Technology, Make Comprehensive Finance More Wonderful.” The year before, the title of Ma’s New Year’s speech was “Technology, Leading Ping An Integrated Finance”. Unchanging subject matter, changing tone, from the call of “leading” to the determination of “making … more exciting”, the rise of the Ping An Financial Technology Empire has moved from vision to implementation.
In January 2014, Chen Xinying became a director of Ping An Bank. This is her third position after joining Ping An in 2013. In January 2013, Chen served as the Chief Information Officer of Ping An and Chairman and CEO of Ping An Technology. In December of the same year, he served as the Chief Operating Officer of Ping An. The promotion of positions is an appreciation of the company’s personal capabilities, and it also gives a high degree of affirmation to the prospective vision brought by this technology management consulting talent from McKinsey.
Do not write 2013, because that was the year of starting layout. Don’t write 2015, because that’s a year of accumulation.
In 2014, Ping An Fintech became popular.
02
Ma Mingzhe
Actually, the “change” in 2014 has been laid in line in Chairman Ma’s annual report “Taishong” in 2013-
“The change of the times is unstoppable. The era of change will inevitably bring a magnificent change between the old and the new … We will do our best to meet the huge challenges of modern technological progress and business model innovation. We will focus on the theme of technology leading finance and financial service life. Adhere to the common development of traditional financial business and non-traditional financial business. “
Before and after 2013 and 2014, “Technology leads finance, financial service life” has become Ping An’s primary strategy, and it has really been put into action.
Compared with Ping An ’s prophecy, other domestic financial institutions have also felt the power of technology, but the real inclusion of strategy is indeed around 2018. By 2018, large-scale state-owned commercial banks will put digitalization at the forefront of their strategies and make overall efforts to integrate digital genes into the bloodstream, with a view to acting in the present and winning in the future.
Picture: Digital strategy of state-owned big banks around 2018 (author hand-painted)
As a senior financier and experienced the story of spring in southern China, Ma Mingzhe’s choice was certainly not a whim.
According to public information, and looking at the measures taken around 2014, Ping An ’s strategy is not to “dethrone a hundred schools” and only respect “technology leadership”, but actually it is a “trinity” of integrated finance, scene ecology, and technology leadership.
Among them, integrated finance is the “Tao”, the scene ecology is the “technique”, and technology leadership is the “tool”. At that time, integrated finance has been deeply cultivated for many years, and the concept of the scene has not been popularized by the public. Technology as the “first productive force” is easy to form value identification and group resonance, so it has become the slogan of the safety strategy.
Integrated finance is the meaning of Mr. Ma ’s “First Principles”.
In fact, integrated finance has always been Ping An ’s strategic outline, but the systematic use of technology as a starting point began in 2010. In 2010, Ping An formulated the “Wan Fo Dynasty” plan to assimilate the Internet into the group-wide comprehensive financial strategy.
Note that it is not an application but an assimilation.
In the beginning, the tenet of the “Wanfo Dynasty” was set as “using the power of the group to accelerate the development of banking business”, that is, to fully mobilize resources such as property insurance and life insurance, to help boost banking business. In fact, the technical level is to integrate the core systems of each subsidiary, at least at the level of customer perception, which is similar to the large concentration of banks at that time.
Soon, Ma Mingzhe promoted the planned upgrade. The original name was “Little Ten Thousand Buddha Dynasty”, and the upgraded “Great Ten Thousand Buddha Dynasty” evolved into a retail integrated financial strategy. User migration. Ping An has many financial business layouts. What it needs to do is to promote the migration of users with low stickiness and low loyalty at the low end of the chain to high-end, and convert them into higher value user groups. As mentioned earlier, the 2014 annual report shows that the customer migration has blossomed.
The various business strategies of the “Great Ten Thousand Buddha Dynasty” were made into a deck of playing cards. For example, the original “Little Ten Thousand Buddha Dynasty” was named “Spades A”, and Ping An Lufax was named “Peach A”, financial technology is named “Square K”.
Note that it is not a technology called ABCD, but a business strategy.
Driven Ping An ’s embrace of technology may have originated from Ma Mingzhe ’s love of digital products, so he has a deeper understanding and prediction of the value and thinking of the Internet.
Ma is an Apple control, especially love iPad. 2010iAfter the advent of Pad, he wrote to executives frequently in the early hours of the morning, immediately sharing his experience of iPad and related apps, and wrote at the end of the e-mail “I just share it with you, do not need to return the e-mail.” Inspired by the “overbearing president”, many Ping An executives loyal to Nokia replaced the iPhone and used the iPad.
Except perceptual cognition is rational judgment in practice.
I believe that at least three things touched Ma ’s judgment:
First of all, it is a few steps that technology allows Ping An to move forward steadily. For example, the insurance telemarketing and online sales business laid the pattern of Ping An ’s core insurance business, and the following Miles was able to use Ping An ’s rights and interests to penetrate the various businesses of Ping An Group and connect with external cooperation resources.
Second, it was the decision to invest in the No. 1 shop. It is said that almost everyone at the time of the Ping An Group Investment Management Committee objected to investing in the No. 1 store, thinking it would be a bottomless hole for losses, but Ma Mingzhe claimed to invest personally if not passed. In the future, Wal-Mart won the controlling stake, and Ping An made great profits. Ma said, “Ping An ’s less than 100 million things were done, and Wal-Mart spent 1.6 billion.” In his words, he confirmed the high value of the Internet business model.
Once again, it is a hidden worry about the fate of the group. On the one hand, it is the dilution of the value of traditional channels. Ma had pointed out inside Ping An that the physical outlets of Ping An Bank were not more than a few hundred, and ICBC had more than 10,000 layouts. According to the traditional offline layout, it was really difficult to catch up, and technology provided an opportunity to surpass the curve. On the other hand, he also realized that if the policy is not deployed online in advance, once the policy gate is loosened, the Internet giants such as Ali and Tencent will have a huge impact on the traditional order of the financial industry by virtue of the previously accumulated user advantages.
In 2013, ZhongAn Insurance, a joint venture of Ali, Tencent and Ping An, was established, and the media exclaimed that Ma Yun, Ma Huateng and Ma Mingzhe “three horses share the same trough”.
Above: “Three horses in the same trough” sketch (hand-painted by the author)
On November 6, the press conference opened with the sound of the night battle drums in the film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. Sure enough, the three “horse” will be exposed and even cross-exposed. When Sanma co-founded ZhongAn Insurance, no one expected that the development of financial technology would be so rapid. At that time, Alipay had just launched Yu’ebao five months ago, and the WeChat red envelope had not yet been launched, and the mobile client of Ping An’s Lufax had just been online for less than a month.
In 2014, ZhongAn Insurance started to make profits, while the average traditional insurance company made profits at least three to five years. It received 10 million yuan in premium income in the financial year of less than two months of operation in 2013, and the scale of premiums is not
The annual reports of listed companies are in fact the chronicles of enterprises.
Management speech is to highlight the company’s structure and vision, and reflect the development strategy and tactics.
Different from the president’s speechMr. Ma Mingzhe, chairman and CEO of Ping An, has a very plain text and a very standardized structure. There must be an outline in the opening chapter, such as Taishi Gong said, the year when the Tao is between pitch and sorrow and joy. In the early years, the text was always printed in the orange symbol of the Ping An symbol, which is quite a bit like a sun.
Picture: Message from the Chairman of the 2014 Ping An Annual Report (from Ping An Annual Report)
2014 is the tenth year of Ping An’s listing.
In ten years, Ping An ’s compound growth rate of total assets exceeded 30%, and the compound growth rate of earnings per share reached 24%. The subject of Mr. Ma’s speech this year was “change and change”. He said that change is strategy and platform, and what is unchanged is the belief of “survive in competition and development in innovation”.
Safety did change in 2014.
Ping An changed its position from a leading personal financial services group in China to an international leading personal financial life service provider. From China to international, from finance to life, the category of customers has changed, and the boundaries of safe business have changed.
There are also three major changes:
One is the change of the strategic system. The initially formed “one door, two focuses, and four markets” constitute the link of scenes, data, and services.
In 2014, the total number of Ping An Internet users reached 137 million. “One door” connects various application scenarios through “any door”, “two focuses” on big data mining, analysis and application of asset management and health management. One-stop financial life service system composed of automobile transactions and real estate financial markets.
The second is the change of tactical heavy equipment. Lufax, Wanlitong, Yitongtong, Ping An Good Car, and Ping An Paying the new generation payment system have built a growth pole for future expansion.
In 2014, Ping An ’s major Internet financial services were all in scale. Lufax has more than 5 million users, and the transaction scale ranks first in the Chinese market; Wanlitong users exceed 70 million, and the annual points issued are 1.959 billion yuan. The number of online and offline cooperative merchants exceeds 500,000, and the transaction scale is nearly 5 billion yuan; There are 40.36 million users of OneAccount; Ping An Good Car has become China’s largest C2B auto trading platform; Ping An Pay’s new generation payment system has been completed, providing a core payment platform for the Internet financial layout.
The third is the change of business layout, the effect of customer migration is significant, and the level of cross-sellingRise, the comprehensive financial territory is ready.
Ping An established an integrated financial product view and customer big data analysis platform, completed the group user experience panorama planning, developed innovative integrated financial portfolio products and services, promoted customer migration, and improved cross-selling. In terms of core financial business, Ping An migrated approximately 7.02 million customers in 2014, and 26% of the total new customers of the subsidiaries within the group came from customer migration. More than 1.2 million new customers have migrated from Internet finance to core financial services.
The changes in the strategic layout, tactical heavy equipment, and business layout in 2014 are described in the annual report. There are still some changes that are not listed in the annual report, but they gradually show up in time.
On New Year’s Day 2014, Ma Mingzhe’s speech to all employees was titled “Technology, Make Comprehensive Finance More Wonderful.” The year before, the title of Ma’s New Year’s speech was “Technology, Leading Ping An Integrated Finance”. Unchanging subject matter, changing tone, from the call of “leading” to the determination of “making … more exciting”, the rise of the Ping An Financial Technology Empire has moved from vision to implementation.
In January 2014, Chen Xinying became a director of Ping An Bank. This is her third position after joining Ping An in 2013. In January 2013, Chen served as the Chief Information Officer of Ping An and Chairman and CEO of Ping An Technology. In December of the same year, he served as the Chief Operating Officer of Ping An. The promotion of positions is an appreciation of the company’s personal capabilities, and it also gives a high degree of affirmation to the prospective vision brought by this technology management consulting talent from McKinsey.
Do not write 2013, because that was the year of starting layout. Don’t write 2015, because that’s a year of accumulation.
In 2014, Ping An Fintech became popular.
02
Ma Mingzhe
Actually, the “change” in 2014 has been laid in line in Chairman Ma’s annual report “Taishong” in 2013-
“The change of the times is unstoppable. The era of change will inevitably bring a magnificent change between the old and the new … We will do our best to meet the huge challenges of modern technological progress and business model innovation. We will focus on the theme of technology leading finance and financial service life. Adhere to the common development of traditional financial business and non-traditional financial business. “
Before and after 2013 and 2014, “Technology leads finance, financial service life” has become Ping An’s primary strategy, and it has really been put into action.
Compared with Ping An ’s prophecy, other domestic financial institutions have also felt the power of technology, but the real inclusion of strategy is indeed around 2018. By 2018, large-scale state-owned commercial banks will put digitalization at the forefront of their strategies and make overall efforts to integrate digital genes into the bloodstream, with a view to acting in the present and winning in the future.
Picture: Digital strategy of state-owned big banks around 2018 (author hand-painted)
As a senior financier and experienced the story of spring in southern China, Ma Mingzhe’s choice was certainly not a whim.
According to public information, and looking at the measures taken around 2014, Ping An ’s strategy is not to “dethrone a hundred schools” and only respect “technology leadership”, but actually it is a “trinity” of integrated finance, scene ecology, and technology leadership.
Among them, integrated finance is the “Tao”, the scene ecology is the “technique”, and technology leadership is the “tool”. At that time, integrated finance has been deeply cultivated for many years, and the concept of the scene has not been popularized by the public. Technology as the “first productive force” is easy to form value identification and group resonance, so it has become the slogan of the safety strategy.
Integrated finance is the meaning of Mr. Ma ’s “First Principles”.
In fact, integrated finance has always been Ping An ’s strategic outline, but the systematic use of technology as a starting point began in 2010. In 2010, Ping An formulated the “Wan Fo Dynasty” plan to assimilate the Internet into the group-wide comprehensive financial strategy.
Note that it is not an application but an assimilation.
In the beginning, the tenet of the “Wanfo Dynasty” was set as “using the power of the group to accelerate the development of banking business”, that is, to fully mobilize resources such as property insurance and life insurance, to help boost banking business. In fact, the technical level is to integrate the core systems of each subsidiary, at least at the level of customer perception, which is similar to the large concentration of banks at that time.
Soon, Ma Mingzhe promoted the planned upgrade. The original name was “Little Ten Thousand Buddha Dynasty”, and the upgraded “Great Ten Thousand Buddha Dynasty” evolved into a retail integrated financial strategy. User migration. Ping An has many financial business layouts. What it needs to do is to promote the migration of users with low stickiness and low loyalty at the low end of the chain to high-end, and convert them into higher value user groups. As mentioned earlier, the 2014 annual report shows that the customer migration has blossomed.
The various business strategies of the “Great Ten Thousand Buddha Dynasty” were made into a deck of playing cards. For example, the original “Little Ten Thousand Buddha Dynasty” was named “Spades A”, and Ping An Lufax was named “Peach A”, financial technology is named “Square K”.
Note that it is not a technology called ABCD, but a business strategy.
Driven Ping An ’s embrace of technology may have originated from Ma Mingzhe ’s love of digital products, so he has a deeper understanding and prediction of the value and thinking of the Internet.
Ma is an Apple control, especially love iPad. 2010iAfter the advent of Pad, he wrote to executives frequently in the early hours of the morning, immediately sharing his experience of iPad and related apps, and wrote at the end of the e-mail “I just share it with you, do not need to return the e-mail.” Inspired by the “overbearing president”, many Ping An executives loyal to Nokia replaced the iPhone and used the iPad.
Except perceptual cognition is rational judgment in practice.
I believe that at least three things touched Ma ’s judgment:
First of all, it is a few steps that technology allows Ping An to move forward steadily. For example, the insurance telemarketing and online sales business laid the pattern of Ping An ’s core insurance business, and the following Miles was able to use Ping An ’s rights and interests to penetrate the various businesses of Ping An Group and connect with external cooperation resources.
Second, it was the decision to invest in the No. 1 shop. It is said that almost everyone at the time of the Ping An Group Investment Management Committee objected to investing in the No. 1 store, thinking it would be a bottomless hole for losses, but Ma Mingzhe claimed to invest personally if not passed. In the future, Wal-Mart won the controlling stake, and Ping An made great profits. Ma said, “Ping An ’s less than 100 million things were done, and Wal-Mart spent 1.6 billion.” In his words, he confirmed the high value of the Internet business model.
Once again, it is a hidden worry about the fate of the group. On the one hand, it is the dilution of the value of traditional channels. Ma had pointed out inside Ping An that the physical outlets of Ping An Bank were not more than a few hundred, and ICBC had more than 10,000 layouts. According to the traditional offline layout, it was really difficult to catch up, and technology provided an opportunity to surpass the curve. On the other hand, he also realized that if the policy is not deployed online in advance, once the policy gate is loosened, the Internet giants such as Ali and Tencent will have a huge impact on the traditional order of the financial industry by virtue of the previously accumulated user advantages.
In 2013, ZhongAn Insurance, a joint venture of Ali, Tencent and Ping An, was established, and the media exclaimed that Ma Yun, Ma Huateng and Ma Mingzhe “three horses share the same trough”.
Above: “Three horses in the same trough” sketch (hand-painted by the author)
On November 6, the press conference opened with the sound of the night battle drums in the film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. Sure enough, the three “horse” will be exposed and even cross-exposed. When Sanma co-founded ZhongAn Insurance, no one expected that the development of financial technology would be so rapid. At that time, Alipay had just launched Yu’ebao five months ago, and the WeChat red envelope had not yet been launched, and the mobile client of Ping An’s Lufax had just been online for less than a month.
In 2014, ZhongAn Insurance started to make profits, while the average traditional insurance company made profits at least three to five years. It received 10 million yuan in premium income in the financial year of less than two months of operation in 2013, and the scale of premiums is not