Pintec CEO William Wei: You Need to Focus

A conversation with bankers about improving customer satisfaction was a watershed moment for William Wei shortly before he and three friends founded the fintech services provider Pintec in 2012.

The conversation hit a dead-end when Wei suggested executives field phone calls at a customer service desk to “hear customer complaints,” he said.

CEO William Wei at Pintec Headquarters in Beijing

“For those big banks, that was impossible.”

Ever since, tech entrepreneur Wei has directed his energy toward satisfying consumers and providing services beyond the reach of traditional bank models. The success of Pintec’s Dumiao, China’s largest third-party provider of digital consumer lending solutions, as well as its robo-advisor Xuanji prove he’s on the right track.

A graduate of the Beijing Institute of Technology and China Europe International Business School, Wei cut his teeth at Huawei, Nokia and Philips before founding the telecom services provider Innovation Technology Corp. (ITC) in 2006.

ITC served firms such as China Mobile and Nokia before being acquired by VanceInfo. Wei served as VanceInfo’s vice president for mobile technology, then left to pursue start-ups as an angel investor.

Wei fondly remembers chatting with business school classmates who later agreed to collaborate. And Pintec was born.

“I was eager to find some new opportunities,” Wei said. “I strongly believed that technology sales could not survive. They had to be involved in some other industry. Something had to change.”

Pintec’s first product was a credit-related, data management system that replaced paper records.

“With paper, you can never track the data (or) customer behavior,” he said.

Banks have always been target customers, Wei said, although early on Pintec chiefly served guarantee and loan companies.

Today, banks are assessing credit risks and issuing consumer loans through Dumiao, or working with Pintec on B2B platforms. Meanwhile, Pintec is pursuing more bank and commercial clients.

But rather than try new businesses, Wei said, Pintec will focus on internet tehnologies serving the financial sector.

“Every day you need to focus, to concentrate,” he said. “I hope I can help the company stay calm, concentrate and achieve our goals.”