Industry | Having been deeply involved in financial technology for 25 years, Kelan Software has taken a difficult and correct path

“AI will reshape all industries.”

More than two years ago, the industry still had doubts about this view. After the baptism of the large model wave, it has become a consensus among thousands of industries.

Among them, finance, as the industry with the highest degree of digitization, is ahead of most of the real economy in digital exploration. In the era of artificial intelligence, the financial industry has once again played the role of “leader”. More and more financial institutions have formulated intelligent transformation strategies, ushering in a new era.

In the digitalization process of the financial industry, digital service providers have always been an indispensable force, serving as technology pioneers and builders of application scenarios. Their names may not be well known to the outside world, but they influence everyone's lifestyle in a subtle way.

When intelligence sweeps across all walks of life, in addition to the star companies standing at the center of the stage, we should also focus on the digital “pioneers” who are steadily working in vertical fields. For example, Kelan Software, which has been deeply involved in the financial technology industry for 25 years, has participated in almost every process of transformation and upgrading of the financial industry, and through repeated exploration and innovation, it has opened a second growth curve that resonates with financial intelligence.

A difficult and correct path

Back in 1999, Wang Anjing, who had been engaged in financial business and technology consulting on Wall Street for more than ten years, returned to China and founded Kelan Software.

Regarding the original intention of starting a business, Wang Anjing recalled in a media interview: “In the mid-1990s, we helped the New York Branch of the Bank of China build an online banking system. At that time, the idea of ​​​​promoting the online trading system to the country came up. But when I introduced it to my colleagues in China, everyone thought it was a fantasy and couldn’t accept the new thing of online banking for a while.”

By the end of the 20th century, the vigorous spring breeze of the Internet crossed the Pacific and blew across the land of China. Internet technology began to be discussed on a small scale. A large number of “returnees” such as Zhang Chaoyang and Robin Li chose to return to China to start businesses. Wang Anjing, who has multiple identities as a “financial veteran” and an “IT expert”, is also one of them.

Different from the popular Copy To China model at the time, what Wang Anjing was still thinking about was the Internetization of banks, an extremely important but “slow-growing” track. Each bank faces different problems and requires different technologies and solutions. It is impossible to apply a fixed model to quickly expand its scale. It can only do projects one after another, sink its teeth into one bone after another, and push the industry forward in small steps. forward.

Patience and perseverance alone are not enough.

Banking is an industry that requires heavy supervision within the system. It cannot grow as wildly as e-commerce, social networking, or the Internet outside the system. If you want to break some established rules, change traditional perceptions, and promote industry innovation, you also need technical confidence and the courage to be the first. Courage is also the mission of Kelan Software.

A direct example is electronic accounts.

Before 2012, “opening an account” required going to an offline branch in person, which virtually hindered the bank’s Internet process. Kelan Software innovatively proposed the idea of ​​”opening a card with a card”. Users do not need to go to a branch, but can open an electronic account online or on a mobile phone. It has completed pilot projects with more than 60 banks within one year. It not only became the origin of electronic accounts in the domestic banking industry, but also laid the foundation for later direct banks, open banks and comprehensive Internet banks.

If we briefly review the history of Kelan Software, we will find that there are many more “firsts” such as electronic accounts.

• When it was founded in 1999, Kelan Software took the lead in using Java application server technology in China and became the first company to promote online banking systems in China;

• In 2005, it pioneered and launched the earliest mobile banking WAP application in China, allowing banks to gradually move from fixed physical locations to people's mobile phones and PADs;

• Shortly after the birth of WeChat in 2013, Kelan Software launched the industry's earliest WeChat banking application, which greatly improved the efficiency of the bank's promotion and marketing services;

• In 2014, the first direct-selling banking application in China was launched. The electronic account system gradually took shape in direct-selling banks. The direct-selling model opened up the service field and service space of electronic banking and laid the foundation for subsequent bank second-class and third-class accounts;

• Beginning in 2017, Kelan Software launched the first cloud-based Internet financial operation cooperation platform in the banking industry, creating a new pattern for the construction and development of the banking service ecosystem…

Kelan Software's insistence on “innovation multiplied by time” has resulted in a brand new banking form: no longer a fixed physical location, but banking services that are ubiquitous and follow you everywhere.

Kelan Software, which has been deeply involved in every node of the bank's digital transformation and has established close cooperative relationships with more than 500 financial institutions, has gradually become a leading service provider in domestic financial digital consulting and solutions, becoming a player in the history of financial technology. A chapter that cannot be bypassed.

But in the mind of Wang Anjing, chairman of Kelan Software, the Internetization of banks is just the starting point. It can be regarded as embarking on the road of digitalization. There are still many challenges ahead.

“Short-term, fast, and exaggerated digitization is likely to be disastrous to the country's critical information infrastructure. “Localization” based on foreign basic software can only be a transition. The core intellectual property rights of basic software databases still need to be mastered. It’s in your own hands. Just like building a building, if the structure of the foundation is not clear, the higher the building, the greater the risk, and ultimately it will be an unbearable national security risk.”

Therefore, around 2015, Kelan Software began the research and development of database products, targeting the “root technology” in the digital field. Kelan Software has set the direction of independent self-research. The framework, kernel, and engine are all completely independent and controllable, and do not involve any Western open source database source code. In order to deeply solve the database demands of banks, Kelan Software has established domestic database joint laboratories with a number of banks, integrating its own project experience into product research and development.

At that time, many database companies had appeared in China, but most of them adopted the core and engine of open source databases and only focused on peripheral tool control modules, disaster recovery modules, and operation and maintenance management. As a veteran who has been in the field of financial technology for nearly 50 years, Wang Anjing knows that open source is a shortcut, but it cannot completely solve national and corporate security issues. Only with independent intellectual property rights can we have the right to speak and be safe. Only then are the authorized parties truly qualified to authorize external parties.

But the “cost” is also obvious. Making application software for banks often only takes a few months to one or two years to develop. It usually takes seven or eight years to build basic software like a database, which requires a lot of R&D resources but does not bring in any revenue during the process. This is also the reason why many companies choose to modify open source software and quickly push it to the market instead of completely solving key technical problems from the source and bottom layer.

Regarding the “incomprehension” of the outside world, Wang Anjing has never doubted himself. Because self-developed databases and the Internetization of banks are both a road with long slopes and thick snow, and you will inevitably encounter difficulties of one kind or another during the process. Only those who have reached the top of the mountain will know that there is a different scenery there.

Heading for higher mountains

write at the end

(forward from”Zhang Hefei’s wealth number”）

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