A new white paper released by Tencent points to a scarcity of fintech talent as a critical impediment to the digitisation of regional Chinese banks.
Tencent and KPMG released the “Regional Bank Digital Transformation White Paper” (区域性银行数字化转型白皮书) on 10 June, which conducted in-depth interviews with 18 regional banks as well as surveys of 46 regional banks.
91% of regional banks surveyed said that they had launched digital transformation initiatives, while 81% said that digitisation was a part of the top level design of the bank’s core strategy or ancillary strategy.
Regional banks forecast marked growth in digital investment, with 90% stating that they would continue to expand investment over the next three years at an average annual growth rate of around 21%.
52% of regional banks said that their digital transition process was still at an early stage, however, with key difficulties lying in the four areas of talent, data, mechanisms and external cooperation.
70% of banks surveyed said that “a shortage of core digital talent” was the main factor impeding their digital transition.
48% of regional banks said that they had already completed collation and platform conversion of their data, but there were still problems such as inconsistent internal and external data quality, difficulty unifying and connecting data, and difficulties obtaining data.
