Exclusive Interview With Mr. Chen Fang, Managing Director Of Lufft China: The Epidemic Situation Promotes The Data Demand Of Financial Institutions; China Urgently Needs To Establish Data Security Standards And Connect With Overseas Countries

"With China's continuous opening up, many overseas investment institutions have successively obtained more business licenses, and their requirements for the breadth and depth of China's market data information, data coverage and compliance are also increasingly high." In an exclusive interview with 21st century economic reporter a few days ago, Chen Fang, managing director of Luft China, said that as big data has become a national basic strategic resource and intangible asset, China's big data industry is also growing at a high speed.

Chen Fang said that in this process, as a data provider with a long history of 168 years, Rover also hopes to contribute its own value. Among them, data opening, data standard setting and data internationalization are three key directions that rover is more concerned about.

Referring to the changes in data demand of financial institutions under the normalization of prevention and control of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, Chen Fang pointed out that the epidemic has accelerated the digital transformation of financial institutions and enterprises to the cloud. If enterprises fail to put digital transformation on the agenda, they are likely to lose the opportunity for sustainable development in the future.

International investors' demand for China's data is increasing

21st century: as a new type of production factor, data has been written into the central document, and since then it has frequently appeared in various "top-level designs". What signals do you think this releases? What will happen to the development of China's big data industry?

Chen Fang: there is a saying that "data is the new oil". In the development of all walks of life, data can be highlighted as an important factor of production. From the perspective of data providers, the introduction of central documents is very timely. It is a very positive signal for regulators and market participants, which means that the understanding of data has risen to a new height.

Data will continue to promote the development of China's big data industry in the future. We pay more attention to data opening, data standard setting and data internationalization.

In recent years, the pace of China's market opening is faster and faster, and overseas investors' demand for China's market data is growing day by day. How to obtain reliable, sustainable, compliant and transparent market data is very important.

For example, as a foreign-funded data provider based in China and looking around the world, Rover has updated its trading platform data in the first time according to the changes in China's market, such as the newly launched bond link and RMB crude oil futures. At the same time, we can also provide real-time and accurate data information on the data of China foreign exchange trading center, which overseas investors are more concerned about.

21st century: in the past few years, how have the global customers changed their demands for relevant data in China?

Chen Fang: with China's continuous opening up, many overseas investors have successively obtained more business licenses, and their requirements for the breadth and depth of China's market data information, data coverage and compliance are also increasingly high.

We have a macro-economic database called datastream. The number of macroeconomic data related to the Chinese market has increased to 350000, and some of the data can be lowered to the county level.

There is also an increasing demand for financial management data from global customers. Many enterprises enter the Chinese market through internationalization. They pay close attention to the data of cash flow, bank account, currency hedging, exchange rate changes, regulatory system and other financial management data.

Different customers may have different demands for data. From the perspective of demand, we can divide them into information, research data and transaction data.

21st century: many local governments hope to increase the utilization rate of local data platforms, and also put forward the idea of establishing trading platforms for data value mining and improving the use of data assets. What do you think the government should do?

Chen Fang: all walks of life are producing huge amounts of data every day. We need to think about how to use machine learning or analyze and sort out the data in a visual way.

I think the government can start from two aspects. One is data opening, the other is the establishment of data standards.

Taking rover as an example, we strongly advocate the establishment of an open and shared data environment. Our data platform has been open to customers and partners. Through the open API (Application Programming Interface), customers and third-party applications can connect with the rover platform.

If the government wants to further promote the development of the data industry, it should increase data openness and create more usage scenarios for big data.

In addition, the big data industry has a long industrial chain. When opening data sharing, we should also take into account the interests of all parties in the upstream, middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain, so that data innovation and data application can develop continuously.

Second, the establishment of data standards. In the process of data integration, the Chinese government needs to think about how to integrate with the global market.

For example, there are different certification standards between the mainland and Hong Kong and Macao in combating anti money laundering in the Great Bay area of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao. From the perspective of the government, we should consider how to operate under a unified standard. The same is true of data standards. Data flow in different places, and the establishment of data standards is very important for data integration.

At present, overseas governments have made many attempts. For example, XBRL, which is widely used overseas, uses an extensible business reporting language. Rover is also very willing to work with the central bank and other financial regulators to set standards for China's financial data.

21st century: data security is an issue of concern to all countries. The governments of China, Europe and the United States have their own focuses. In your opinion, how to build consensus on data security standards among different markets? Is there a chance to establish a universal data standard?

Chen Fang: we are also very concerned about the topic of data security standards. We will conduct research internally and cooperate with external experts to provide different data according to the regulations of different regions.

At present, the importance of data security is becoming more and more prominent. With the international situation becoming more complex and cyber crime more unpredictable, security loopholes will spread in the financial ecosystem. Last year, we conducted a survey of more than 3000 compliance department heads of large international institutions and found that financial institutions still need to improve their awareness of data security.

Digital transformation is related to the future development of enterprises

21st century: the current epidemic is still spreading all over the world. What changes have taken place in the demand of financial institutions for data?

Chen Fang: under the epidemic situation, the demand for data of financial institutions has changed obviously. As a lot of work has been transferred from offline to online, the demand of enterprises for real-time data has increased rapidly, and higher requirements have been put forward for timeliness and accuracy of real-time data, as well as new requirements for data transmission mode.

How to get the most timely and fastest first-hand data is very important. In addition, there are some peripheral derivative data, including some intraday data, which are also widely concerned.

21st century: how does the epidemic affect the financial data market? Especially in the case of black swan and grey rhinoceros appearing more frequently recently, what changes will happen to the market?

Chen Fang: the epidemic has greatly accelerated the process of digital transformation in all walks of life. As I just mentioned, data is the "new oil", which plays an increasingly important role in the digital process.

And to provide a large number of data for financial institutions to track the epidemic and provide a basis for business decision-making. Many financial institutions have embedded business processes into the cloud. However, we also see that there are still many financial institutions that lack strong infrastructure and technology and can not quickly adapt to the changes in the current environment.

The epidemic may be normalized. If enterprises fail to put digital transformation on the agenda, they are likely to lose the opportunity for sustainable development in the future.

21st century: what changes have taken place in the work of the company and its customers since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic? Such as staff office mode, communication with customers? What kind of problems are financial institutions facing?

Chen Fang: the changes are mainly reflected in the flexible office plan and enterprise cloud.

In the case of Luft, within 48 hours of the initial outbreak, we have transferred 18000 employees worldwide to a virtual office.

In addition, the company provides flexible office solutions for employees. Rover management proposed in June that employees around the world could choose to work remotely by the end of 2020. We have local emergency response teams all over the world to ensure the transparency and openness of information with our employees. The second point is that enterprises go to the cloud, which can ensure that rover can continuously provide high-quality services to customers in any environment and in any state. As a global company, Rover's "7 * 24" operation mode ensures uninterrupted data processing capacity.

21st century: what changes have taken place in the search results of rover terminals during the epidemic?

Chen Fang: We analyzed the search results of 400000 end users and found seven interesting changes.

The first is a search of the results of Air Asia stock. In the early stage of the epidemic from February to March 2020, the number of searches for the shares of major airlines in Asia has soared by 2000% compared with the average in previous years, reflecting that investors are very concerned about the impact of the epidemic on specific industries.

The second is the focus on real-time news. Since the beginning of the year, the number of users' views on real-time news headlines has doubled compared with previous years. We are very concerned about how to get first-hand real-time news reports. From April to may, investors are more concerned about the impact of the epidemic on the overall economy. We can see that investors pay more attention to the US labor cost data in the first week of May compared with the average of previous years by 500%.

The third key word is e-commerce. During the epidemic period, e-commerce received unprecedented attention. In May, zoom's search volume reached 350% of the previous year's average, indicating that the value of e-commerce is prominent under the demand of online office.

The fourth word is foreign exchange. The volatility of foreign exchange trading volume increased sharply in March, with an average daily trading volume of $540 billion recorded on the luftware foreign exchange trading platform, the highest ever recorded.

The fifth is crude oil. During the period from May to may, the crude oil contract volume increased by 150%.

The sixth is the focus on the soundness of the banking sector. Data show that compared with the global financial crisis in 2008, the current capital position of banks is much better. Of course, banks are also under great pressure. In the first week of May, with the rise of interest rates, the number of searches for Euribor (European interbank offered rate) surged by more than a third, corresponding to the pressure of rising financing costs of European banks in the following period of time.

The last point is about sustainable development. The concept of sustainable development driven by the concept of "sustainable development" and "sustainable development" has become a hot topic of social protection.

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