As an operation-intensive, data-intensive, and risk-intensive industry, the banking industry faces many unique challenges in the process of transforming to the cloud. For example, banks need to have uninterrupted business innovation capabilities without being restricted by the system development cycle; The way of development and upgrading is becoming more and more difficult to meet the increasingly comprehensive business innovation requirements; business architecture and information system architecture do not match; these have become the main factors restricting financial innovation capabilities. How to plan business systems in a forward-looking manner, ensure stable operations, improve customer experience, improve operational efficiency, and strengthen risk control through financial technology innovation is crucial to building the core competitiveness of financial institutions.
In this regard, Kuang Wenchuan, deputy general manager of China Electronics Financial Trust and director of China Electronics Financial Research Institute, believes that core system construction is the fundamental link in the digital transformation of banks, and traditional technical components, application components and processes cannot support new business forms in the future. Refactoring became the way to go.
Why is core system construction so important to the digital transformation of financial institutions? Kuang Wenchuan told reporters that financial transactions involving the core banking system have penetrated into every aspect of our daily life. support. In this context, the core system needs three essential capabilities: one is high processing capacity, because the current situation is that the transaction volume is increasing, and the processing speed is required to be faster; the second is the service assembly capability, the system can support the assembly of different Financial services and non-financial services to meet the requirements of different scenarios. The third is to continuously output data and support digital intelligence capabilities after real-time processing. These three capabilities are closely related to the requirements of digital transformation.
Insight into the needs of the industry, relying on more than 20 years of deep accumulation in the field of banking core business systems, combined with the core construction practices of more than dozens of different types of financial institutions, and multiple system iteration experience, with a new system architecture, Implement the process and path, and launch the "Yuanqing" cloud-native distributed core business system (abbreviation: "Yuanqing" core system) at the China International Finance Exhibition.
First of all, what factors should financial institutions consider when designing a distributed core business system?
Miao Zheng, chief consultant of the core business system of China Electronics Financial Research Institute, said that banks are often very cautious when selecting core systems. Some institutions will hire consulting companies and refer to peer institutions for long-term inspections and demonstrations. The current core system is in the implementation process. Due to the trend of distributed cloud native architecture and the demands of digital transformation, it is no longer just a core system software installation and customization, but requires an integrated business architecture, business model, application design, The integrated scheme of standardized development and supporting technology can ensure the achievement of construction goals.
When financial institutions select core systems, in addition to paying attention to cost and cycle, it is more important to look at the core system itself and its supporting infrastructure. The first consideration is the ability of the core system to support business strategies as a whole. That is, forward-looking. Another aspect of investigation is the business value of core system reconstruction, that is, the ability to integrate technology and business. The goal is to drive business upgrades through technology leadership.
The third aspect is the construction of supporting scientific and technological systems, especially the cultivation of new technology capabilities and the accumulation of assets. As part of the release of the "Source Engine" cloud-native distributed core business system, CLP Jinxin has launched an integrated cloud-native core system implementation from enterprise architecture, business modeling, application design, system development and implementation, to operation and maintenance Technology, aiming at the core problems of the current core system construction of banks, helps banks break through the bottleneck of core system construction and eliminate pain points.
What are the unique advantages of the "Yuanqing" core system relying on the "Yuanqi" financial-grade digital base?
Kuang Wenchuan mentioned that since 2013, with the rise of Internet finance and the improvement of the overall digitalization of society, the competition in China's banking industry has gradually intensified, and the personalized needs of bank users and the demand for inclusive financial services have continued to increase. In the process of serving various banks, China Electronics Financial Trust has made adjustments in the technical and business structures in accordance with industry trends and technological development achievements, and has begun to explore and accumulate in the field of cloud-native core business systems. In terms of technical architecture, relying on distributed clusters and cloud technology to achieve computing capabilities comparable to and surpassing traditional mainframes, and to form a set of effective systems and methods, this is the original intention of the cloud-native technology platform provided by "Yuanqi" .
Relying on the new financial-level digital base "Yuanqi", the "Yuanqing" cloud-native distributed core business system supports multi-site and multi-active operation. The application architecture is easier to assemble functions, and based on the cloud-native architecture, it adopts new system design concepts and The innovative integrated implementation process has realized the highly flexible dynamic scheduling and operation capabilities of the core system cluster, and at the same time, it has also stepped up in terms of security.
On the other hand, based on the accumulated capabilities of China Electronics in the domestic independent infrastructure industry chain in the past ten years, the distributed architecture of China Electronics Financial Trust has also been polished by the experience of more than 40 financial institutions in more than 10 years. The advantages of the two aspects are superimposed to form a perfect combination of banking business experience and cloud native architecture. In terms of business, the industry consensus is that when a financial institution already has hundreds to thousands of applications, it is necessary to adopt the enterprise architecture method for requirements management and overall architecture design, that is, to use the platform engineering method for large-scale cross-project requirements management.
The cloud-native distributed core business system "Yuanqing" designed and developed based on the concept of "integration of industry and technology" not only aligns business capabilities with application architecture, but also supports an integrated implementation process to ensure the quality of project implementation. There is a complete design verification mechanism to effectively improve the quality of implementation and control implementation risks.
Figure 1 The core system of "Source Engine" utilizes cloud-native, distributed, and micro-service technologies, and based on the design idea of enterprise architecture, builds basic services, business services, transaction centers, and a series of supporting components (as shown in Figure 1), including business architecture and multiple microservice applications.
In the business architecture, business services provide banks with more flexible choices, support product granularity function replaceability, and can also quickly introduce new product services to support future business development and achieve business agility; the transaction center realizes customer-oriented experience and The process arrangement and business assembly of business scenarios have a high degree of business flexibility and friendly customer experience, helping to realize a true customer-centricity; basic services provide basic business support capabilities including products, pricing, accounts, accounting, etc., empowering Responsive innovations in banking services. The multiple micro-service applications it builds can be independently deployed and run, providing banks with flexible business expansion, system integration and ecological open capabilities.
The core system of "Source Engine" recognizes business capabilities through business modeling in the top-level design, realizes the alignment of business capabilities and microservices, and deploys microservices to run in containers, forming the unification of the three architectures of business, application, and deployment ;Using the "Yuanqi" financial-level digital base as the underlying support, it provides high availability, high stability, high security and elastic expansion capabilities in the underlying support; uses the platform engineering integrated tool chain to achieve "industrial technology integration" and supports heavy application structure, its tool chain can quickly implement a new system method suitable for small and medium-sized banks, which is also an innovative process, and can quickly and economically realize the construction of a new core system; at the same time, in terms of layered management and control, based on business modeling The result is hierarchical control and reusable application capabilities. Aligning business, application and technical architecture, the core system of "Yuanqing" has formed a business capability improvement plan for rapid response to business needs, helping banks to build ecological banks, agile banks, and smart banks.
At the same time, the core system of "Yuanqing" has rich thematic accumulation and design verification mechanism, which can effectively avoid technical risks that will erupt in the later stage. In terms of project implementation, the system also adopts a unique implementation process to ensure the progress and stability of the project. At present, the product has been promoted and implemented in various financial institutions such as large state-owned banks, joint-stock banks, provincial rural credit cooperatives, city commercial banks, and rural commercial banks, helping financial institutions to greatly improve transaction performance.
The core banking system has experienced nearly 30 years of development in my country. It has developed from the "fat core" of the integrated business system to the "thin core" of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) to the current "distributed" architecture. The future is still full of challenges . At present, my country's core banking system, from imitation to catching up, has gradually caught up with the world's advanced level in terms of business concepts, and has been at the forefront of the world in supporting core banking business processing with distributed technology. The principle of continuing to deepen the industry will allow us to see more successful applications of financial technology innovations and support the construction of the digital economy.