On April 12, Shanghai Bingjian Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Bingjian Technology”), an artificial intelligence risk control company, announced the completion of a C2 round of financing of 228 million yuan. This round of financing was led by Guochuang Zhongding, and Oriental Fuhai and Xi Domain Capital followed the investment, and China Investment Capital served as the exclusive investment advisor. Before the end of 2020, Bingjian Technology had just completed the C1 round of financing with an amount of approximately 200 million yuan. The amount of Series C financing completed by Bingjian Technology in two times has exceeded 400 million yuan.
Use artificial intelligence to help risk assessment
Bingjian Technology was established in 2015. Relying on artificial intelligence technology, it provides services such as personal risk prediction, enterprise risk prediction, intelligent risk control decision-making center, and intelligent customer acquisition. It can provide banks, consumer finance companies, insurance and other financial institutions with the entire process solution.
As a pure technology company, Bingjian Technology does not engage in joint loan or loan assistance business. At present, Bingjian Technology’s standard risk control products have more than 10 million daily calls, helping millions of small and micro enterprises and hundreds of millions of long-tailed people to obtain financial services.
Bingjian Technology takes deep learning, knowledge graphs, NLP (natural language processing), federal learning and other cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies as innovative breakthroughs. It has obtained 31 national invention patents, 118 national software copyrights, and 34 patents are under substantive examination. in. Bingjian Technology has been selected as one of the top 50 leading financial technology companies in China by KPMG for five consecutive years.
In addition to the financial field, Bingjian Technology is also actively expanding the application of artificial intelligence in other industries, such as medical care, government affairs, security, and so on.
Bingjian Technology completed 5 rounds of financing from 2015 to 2019. Investors include Fengrui Capital, Yunqi Capital, and Chuangshi Partners Capital. Up to now, Bingjian Technology has received nearly 1.1 billion yuan in financing.
Gu Lingyun, the founder, chairman and CEO of Bingjian Technology, graduated from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University with a doctorate degree. He has served as the founder and head of the ZestFinance model group, co-founder and chief risk control officer of Turbo Financial Group, and chief of Kabbage Scientist, and worked for Merrill Lynch Securities and IDG Capital.
Gu Lingyun told a reporter from China Times that years of financial industry experience is particularly important for the establishment of Bingjian Technology. As a technology company that started in the financial industry, Bingjian Technology has a deep understanding of the business processes of financial institution customers.
According to Gu Lingyun, Bingjian Technology has achieved profitability and its revenue has grown rapidly, so there is no need to rely on financing to supplement blood. This round of financing is mainly used to expand the R&D team, conduct investment and mergers in the upstream and downstream, improve the business map, and actively expand overseas markets. .
At present, Bingjian Technology has reached cooperation with Singapore Overseas Chinese Wing Hang Bank (OCBC), Thailand Commercial Bank (SCB), etc., and its business covers Southeast Asia, the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries and regions.
Serving various financial institutions
It is understood that the financial customers served by Bingjian Technology include not only large banks such as Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank, and Bank of Communications, but also many high-quality city commercial banks, rural commercial banks, etc., as well as most licensed consumer finance companies.
In Gu Lingyun’s view, the services of different types of financial institutions are very different. The big banks have relatively complete IT construction and have a better understanding of the frontier areas of financial technology, so they are relatively clear about the products and services they need.
Some small and medium-sized banks are also very ambitious in financial technology, hoping to expand the market within the scope of compliance by increasing investment in technology. However, due to factors such as weak technical foundation and difficulty in recruiting scientific and technological talents, there are certain difficulties in its financial technology construction. Moreover, due to the pressure of operating performance, small and medium-sized banks are also more prone to risk agglomeration, and digital transformation is imminent. Small and medium-sized banks often need technology companies to provide turnkey services. Bingjian Technology can provide tailor-made services according to the needs of small and medium banks.
In the past few years, while cooperating with Internet giants in Internet loan business, small and medium-sized banks often rely heavily on cooperative institutions for diversion and customer acquisition, and even risk control outsourcing, and risks have gradually exposed.
Therefore, the recent introduction of new regulations on Internet loans and other regulatory policies have emphasized the independent risk control capabilities of small and medium-sized banks.
Our reporter learned that after the introduction of these policies, local corporate banks are also actively transforming, and industry differentiation is emerging. Some people in the banking industry said that strengthening their own risk control capabilities, increasing the proportion of self-operating business, and reducing their dependence on joint lending partners are the current direction of small and medium-sized banks.
In addition, the recent introduction of the support policy for inclusive small and micro enterprise loans has also encouraged local corporate banks to tilt their loans to inclusive small and micro enterprises.
According to data from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, in 2020, China’s banking financial institutions will provide 15.27 trillion yuan in inclusive small and micro enterprise loans, of which urban commercial banks will issue 2.22 trillion yuan, and rural financial institutions will issue 5.18 trillion yuan. Local corporate banks have gradually Become the main force of loans for small and micro enterprises.
Bingjian Technology stated that the combination model of bank + technology company is a low-cost breakthrough for small and medium banks to expand their small and micro loan business.
According to sales personnel of Bingjian Technology, since the implementation of the new Internet loan regulations, local corporate banks have gradually increased their business consultations on joint modeling and technology. “Many local corporate banks also provide technical services for risk control of small and micro enterprise loans. Very interested.”
Investment is concentrated in the head
With the economic recovery in the first quarter of this year, global investment and financing in areas such as artificial intelligence and financial technology have gradually become active.
The latest 2021 AI Index Report released by Stanford University shows that although the total amount of global AI company financing reached a new high in 2020, the number of AI companies that received financing has declined for three consecutive years since 2017. Investment is increasingly concentrated in leading companies.
So-called financial technology companies that directly engage in lending-related businesses are increasingly struggling to survive under the new regulatory environment. Companies that simply provide technology, especially those that focus on providing enterprise-level services with artificial intelligence technology and empowering financial institutions, are receiving more capital.
Huang Aizhou, the managing partner of KPMG China’s financial technology, said: “One of the biggest changes we will see in 2020 is the shift in the focus of financial technology companies. Now companies are focusing on how to empower traditional financial institutions instead of directly Consumers provide products.”
Gu Lingyun told reporters that as the artificial intelligence track continues to mature, both the primary market and the secondary market have a clearer understanding: technology companies driven by algorithms and technology, and traditional data companies are huge. Value difference. The investment market has increasingly respected technology content, and Bingjian Technology’s first-mover technological advantages have become more obvious.
Jiang Yifeng, managing director of Guochuang Zhongding, said that Guochuang Zhongding focuses on the application of a new generation of information technology in the new economy, and pays special attention to product innovation, new market demand and efficiency improvement opportunities brought about by technological progress. As an artificial intelligence technology company, Bingjian Technology provides risk control model customization and application scenario development for various customers based on algorithms and technologies. In the past few years, Bingjian has continuously increased R&D investment, not only for banks of different sizes. Demand, provide a variety of standardized products, greatly improve the efficiency of delivery; and expand the service targets from banks to non-bank financial institutions and then to medical, government, security and other industries.
Huang Xiaoli, founding partner of Xiyu Capital, believes that Bingjian’s long-term accumulation of intelligent risk control modeling has built its core basic capabilities, and its AI modeling capabilities have gradually expanded the industry application boundary, which will continue to expand with the continuous expansion of data and scenarios , The ability to continue to increase, is expected to become an indispensable key force in the future digital economy.
“Only financial institutions that embrace the development of supervision and compliance have a future. This also means that financial institutions have to improve their technological strength. Therefore, the strengthening of supervision is a good thing for pure technology companies such as Bingjian Technology.” Gu Lingyun told a reporter from China Times.
Industry insiders pointed out to reporters that around 2000, China’s banking industry ushered in the first IT revolution, which also gave birth to many listed financial technology companies. Now, the banking industry has entered the era of financial technology 2.0, and its business has shifted from offline to online. Through artificial intelligence technology, the banking business will also be deeply restructured. This is a good development opportunity for third-party companies that focus on technology.
Editor-in-charge: Meng Junlian Editor-in-chief: Ran Xuedong
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