When evaluating the choice of App development technology, technical personnel often only consider the problem of solving cross-platform, hot update, development language, development framework, and the choice of RN, WeeX, Flutter, or native and Hybrid technologies. But in the field of finance, these technologies are only the means of implementation at the bottom, they are tactical, technical, from the perspective of information. Focus on improving internal development efficiency and reducing development costs. This is still the realization of App as an information process, and 20 years ago, the development of websites to integrate and output some internal technical systems for customers to serve themselves on the Internet, is the same thinking.
The mobile Internet has changed this pattern and brought about the digital age. Mobile App is the beginning of digitization. The new generation of financial apps should at least do the following.
It has the ability to spread. Not just information, but tools and scenarios. At present, the most popular, the most easily accepted by the public, is the carrier of small procedures. Think about it. Now, even people in their 70s and 80s know about the small program in wechat, and how to open the health code to enter the community. Children buy e-commerce products for their parents and forward them to a small program that allows the elderly to open the cart and see if they want something. This perception at the end user level is not achievable at the pure technical implementation level of RN or Flutter.
Ability to connect. The difference between platform-based apps and purely tool-based apps is that the former is naturally social, which is also the product brought to us by the mobile Internet. The current class of both the banking, securities and insurance App, the vast majority of thinking, lack of platform is made of highly homogenized, customer service oriented, tools, but many natural decided it should be the nature of the financial services platform, is docking – internal external customers, partners, and various lines of business and the positions and functions. Connecting multiple parties, allowing them to communicate and interact in a common scene and context, is another element of digitization. Small programs, however, are just the technical carriers that can facilitate connection through scenarioization.
Have ecological ability. We know the Internet giants have gradually formed the so-called Super App (Super), they are holding a public domain flow, on its own platform to a large number of third party “in”, let their customers in a Super App get all the tools and services, through the rich ecosystem for users, but also to partner firmly tied down. There are different views on whether Super App can appear in the financial industry. But the apps of some large domestic banks are obviously trying to become Super apps and play ecological games. So is there no reference value for small and medium-sized financial institutions? Obviously not. In the digital world, everything is ecological. It is impossible to imagine that any financial institution in this era does not need external cooperation — information content providers, partners of new media, commission sales agencies of financial products, professional training institutions… Through a powerful background of compliance review, it is possible to “put” the small programs of partners into their own apps, so as to jointly serve customers with external resources. Take insurance companies as an example, it is entirely possible to build such a digital ecological platform, introduce more partners to serve customers, and turn static “insurance accounts” into “users”.
With the most simple and optimal user experience. In fact, many financial services are low-frequency, so there is no need to expect the so-called user stickiness and activity. A large number of functions are stacked in the App, which may not have a good input-output ratio. It is a better direction to attract and convert users by pushing high-quality, personalized and customized information content, and to give them clean and simple self-service functions when they arrive.