How Chinese City Banks Accelerate IT Efficiency with DevOps Maturity Models

Amid digital transformation, enterprises are adopting DevOps to boost IT efficiency. The "R&D‑Operations Integrated (DevOps) Capability Maturity Model" series, led by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), provides high‑value guidance. Ten city commercial banks and other financial institutions participated in the CAICT‑organized DevOps maturity assessments, enhancing IT capabilities, integrating team resources and talent, and better supporting business systems.

Participating institutions (10): Zhongyuan Bank, Zhengzhou Bank, Ningbo Bank, Zhejiang Rural Commercial Union Bank, Nanjing Bank, Baixin Bank, Zhongbang Bank, Zhongyuan Consumer Finance, Xinwang Bank.

These institutions completed 20 assessment projects covering continuous delivery, technical operation, security, system & tools, and performance measurement.

Continuous Delivery (Standard 3) Compliance

Zhejiang Rural Commercial Union Bank: First city bank to assess Continuous Delivery

Fengshou Mobile Banking, built on mobile internet, big data, AI, cloud computing and 5G, offers a unified, intelligent, 24/7 financial‑plus‑life service platform. It uses the bank's Eagle mobile development platform, integrating rich front‑end, client and back‑end components, and is deployed via containers.

The Merchant Financial Cloud provides a one‑stop management platform for merchants, integrating financial, rights and marketing products, and supports customer acquisition, coupon marketing, payment, settlement, big‑data operations, wealth management and consumer credit.

Zhengzhou Bank: New Core Business System & New Retail Loan System

By embedding DevOps principles, Zhengzhou Bank achieved standardized configuration and environment management, dramatically improving deployment efficiency through automated deployment, establishing a comprehensive testing hierarchy, and applying automated testing. A full‑lifecycle continuous‑delivery platform now spans business, development, testing and operations, boosting overall efficiency.

Zhongbang Bank: Internet Financial Service Platform

Zhongbang Bank, an internet bank, adopts a "just‑need, pain‑point, high‑frequency" design mindset, leveraging big data, cloud computing and AI to achieve full‑online, automated, intelligent services. The platform uses private cloud and container technologies to enable rapid elastic scaling for business spikes.

Zhongyuan Consumer Finance: New Generation Consumer Credit System

Launched in October 2020, the system achieved a six‑fold increase in daily delivery throughput, reduced defect‑fix time to under one hour, reached 100 % unit‑test pass rate and 100 % automated‑test coverage, and raised monthly production frequency to 18 releases, markedly improving delivery quality and efficiency.

Ningbo Bank: Scene Payment System & Financial Services System Financing Center

The Scene Payment System upgrades the payment middle‑platform, adding modules for scenario‑based payments, accounting, routing, settlement, management and exchange, and separates UnionPay functions from the core to improve core slimming and risk management.

The Financial Services System Financing Center refines user permissions, creates an internal credit module, integrates with core and loan systems, adds a regulatory‑center financing query module, and optimizes transaction speed and user experience.

Xinwang Bank: Distributed Consumer Credit Core System

The project adopts a distributed architecture with domain‑driven design, building micro‑services for products, users, limits, loans, payments and accounting. It emphasizes product configurability, enabling rapid creation of differentiated online credit products.

Nanjing Bank: Digital Credit Card Project

Following a "cloud‑based, online‑based, intelligent" strategy, the digital credit card transforms traditional cards into a digital product delivered via mini‑programs and public accounts, enabling full online acquisition, activation, benefits and instant payment, forming a closed loop of acquisition‑activation‑benefits‑repurchase.

Technical Operation (Standard 4) Compliance

Zhengzhou Bank: Core Business System

Deployed in May 2018, the new "slim" core features flexible product and pricing factories, micro‑service‑based module separation, database read‑write splitting, traffic control, and high‑availability mechanisms, enhancing reliability, scalability and transaction throughput.

Security and Risk Management (Standard 6) Compliance

Zhongyuan Bank: Personal Mobile Banking

DevSecOps integrates security services into the agile delivery pipeline, embedding controllable security measures to enable high‑efficiency, secure delivery. Since 2017, the bank has built an enterprise‑wide application‑lifecycle security management system, covering training, requirement analysis, design, coding, testing and more.

Zhengzhou Bank: Electronic Banking

The electronic banking system extends core banking functions to online channels, offering self‑service, personalized banking, and leveraging internet advantages to deliver richer, more convenient services.

System and Tools (Standard 8) Compliance

Zhongyuan Bank: Original Development‑Operations Integrated Platform

The pipeline module evolves from the existing DevOps platform, offering flexibility, ease of use, standardization and distinctive practices. Built on a distributed micro‑service architecture and deployed in a dedicated container cloud, it ensures stability, dynamic scaling and supports large‑scale concurrent pipelines.

Performance Measurement Compliance

Zhongyuan Bank: R&D Efficiency Insight Platform

The platform aggregates data across the entire R&D lifecycle—from demand, development, testing to deployment—providing multi‑dimensional metrics and intelligent analysis for organizations, projects and individuals. It supports closed‑loop improvement of delivery efficiency and compliance with R&D management standards.

About the DevOps Capability Maturity Model

The model, jointly created by CAICT, the Cloud Computing Open Source Industry Alliance, the Efficient Operations Community, BATJ and leading enterprises, is the first comprehensive DevOps standard worldwide. It has been adopted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and recognized by the ITU‑T as the global first DevOps international standard. The framework covers process management, continuous delivery, technical operation, security, system & tools, business value management, continuous testing, performance measurement, platform engineering, and reliability engineering.