OneConnect

History

2018: Hundreds of banks implement clouds and a blockchain thanks to OneConnect

Hundreds of small Chinese banks started customized mobile applications and give opportunities of interbank trade operations based on a blockchain with assistance of one of the largest insurance conglomerates of the country — Ping An Group. It is said in the publication Financial Times (FT) issued at the beginning of April, 2018.

From 2014 to 2018 OneConnect, subsidiary company of Ping An Group concern, sold cloud services in the field of bank service to more than 460 Chinese banks. Different software products were provided, beginning from mobile banking applications and finishing with the systems of credit rating and finance applications and also platforms for transactions between the main banking systems using blockchain technologies.

Cloud and a blockchain services help small banks with digitalization with China

The deputy CEO of Ping An and the chief executive officer of Ping An Jessica Tan said that OneConnect suggests to transform the outdated systems of small and medium banks, having stopped them completely in digital — and from banks not much time and monetary costs for this purpose will be required.

Workers these banks have neither specialized offers, nor suitable technologies and skills, - Jessica Tang about provincial small banks noted, many of which are considerably deleted from financial centers.  — These banks do not have enough people to provide the necessary service level, and at the same time they cannot even employ the necessary specialists because they are in very hardly accessible areas.

The Ping An company did not publish information on income, however at the end of 2017 estimated OneConnect at $7.4 billion Besides, OneConnect is going to provide initial public offering at the exchange in Hong Kong which, according to specialists, in 2018 can provide with additional revenue in $2 billion.

OneConnect is among the world companies which are engaged in sale of digital and cloud banking services. In this list Fidor Bank and SolarisBank also appear. At this OneConnect works in much bigger scales, than the similar companies: thanks to huge network of banks it services more than 75 million clients and processes 60 million credit requests in a month.

The model used by the company reminds that which was offered to startups by Amazon Web Services (AWS) company, FT notes.

You see, and OneConnect can turn out Amazon Web Services of banking – here that really attracts me in this company, - the partner of Bain & Co in Shanghai John Ott noticed. – It seems to me, in the future banks will work on already known model of cloud service of banking applications and the software because they will be guided by a positive example of OneConnect — in the same way as startups equal on Amazon.

Partly Ping An is guided by acute shortage of basic bank offers on the whole country – products of the company will be for certain in demand. Many small banks in China cannot even even provide a digital analog of the simplest structured investments thanks to which clients are more interested in monthly fees because they get big profit — mutually advantageous process.

In the majority of the developed markets we take such offers for granted — Jessica Tang says. — However in China with its imperfect and backward banking system creation and implementation of a similar product will take not less than a year — if, of course, the bank will deal with a problem alone.

While the majority of services which Ping An sells to banks can completely unroll and begin to be used for only several weeks, Tang added, having noted that implementation of the mobile banking application provided to OneConnect will cost approximately five times cheaper, than independent application programming.^[1]

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