Firms Bank on Secure Transactions

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On March 17, Huang Anquan, a stock investor in east China's Fujian Province, found a mysterious 10-million-yuan deposit in his account with Fuzhou-based Guangfa Huafu Securities. It disappeared from his account a day later.

The brokerage firm told Huang the money appeared in his account because of a temporary breakdown of the firm's IT transaction system. The story later changed, with the firm insisting the deposit appeared because of Internet testing it was carrying out.

The firm's responses did nothing to ease Huang's doubts about the security of his Internet transactions. The error was reported by the Economic Information Daily, raising security concerns among stock investors.

A recent survey conducted by Unisys Finance Services, part of Unisys, a worldwide leading IT solutions provider, showed that while burgeoning electronic storage and transmission of data has provided convenience and value for consumers and businesses alike, it has also created opportunities for criminal activities.

Security is paramount if financial services firms are to earn their clients' trust.

Several online brokerage firms reported in October 2006 that hackers had entered their computer systems and made unauthorized trades, resulting in millions of dollars worth of customer losses.

Cases of lost, stolen or exposed personal data are frequently in the headlines. This raises doubt as to whether any institution can be trusted with funds or personal information.

A Unisys survey of 6,492 bank and credit card account holders from eight countries in 2005 found that two-thirds of the respondents worried about identity fraud and the safety of their bank and credit card accounts.

These concerns pose a serious challenge to many businesses and other organizations that are custodians of personal information. But the challenge is particularly acute for banks and brokerage firms, for which security, trust and business performance are so entwined.

"The challenge more than just to pay lip service to the relationship between security, trust and business performance is to put appropriate processes and technology in place to support those processes," said Reuben Khoo, vice-president and managing director of Unisys Financial Services Asia Pacific.

As an IT solutions supplier, Khoo helps banks improve their client relationship management.

Guo Tianyong, director of the banking research center at the Central University of Finance and Economics, said Chinese banks' IT infrastructure, especially at emerging commercial banks, was still at a lower level compared to their foreign rivals.

"Local banks will only be able to increase their competitiveness if they build up a centralized database and an open service system for more efficient and normative management," Guo said.

Since China fulfilled its commitment to the World Trade Organization in opening up the banking sector at the end of last year, every aspect of competition between local and foreign banks has intensified including building IT systems.

As foreign banks launched a recruitment war to find local talents when the country's renminbi retail business opened at the end of 2006, local banks initiated their own battle improving their IT systems to take on the sophisticated services of their overseas counterparts.

Local IT research company CCW Research said that in 2006, the total amount Chinese financial institutions put into IT system building reached 30.3 billion yuan, an increase of 10 percent on the previous year and the highest rise in the past few years.

It estimated the total input of financial institutions in IT system building in 2007 would exceed 10 percent, given the increased competition.

"Chinese banks were busy restructuring themselves for initial public offerings in the past few years. And they made strategic moves such as writing off non-performing loans and increasing capital adequacy ratios. So the IT system building projects were postponed," Khoo said.

Now that major Chinese banks have listed on the stock market they are building up well-functioning databases and other IT infrastructure.

For example, one of the Big Four Chinese banks, China Construction Bank, invests around 20 to 30 percent in IT system building each year. It's currently running 80 IT system projects.

"There are three steps for Chinese banks: First, to realize business growth; second, to guarantee regulatory compliance; and third, to reduce costs and modernize management," Khoo said.

"Service excellence and relationships are what will differentiate winners from losers, because the majority of customers think banking has become homogenous," he said.

(China Daily March 27, 2007)

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