ICBC (Asia) Maximizes Cross-border Opportunities with Digital Revamp
- By CDOTrends editors
- May 27, 2018
Cross-border finance opportunities are surging, thanks to growing business opportunities and initiatives like One Belt One Road (OBOR) and Greater Bay Area.
In turn, banks are turning to solution providers to offer a more scalable, agile platform to meet customer needs.
ICBC (Asia), the Hong Kong-incorporated overseas banking business of mainland-based ICBC Group, is a prime example.
It wanted to maximize offshore RMB opportunities in Hong Kong and RMB-based cross-border banking services as part of its "Taking Root in Hong Kong, Connecting with Mainland China, Spanning Across Asia Pacific, and Facing the World" business strategy using biometric recognition, blockchain, Big Data Analytics, AI, and cloud computing technologies.
However, the firm's current business systems and ICT infrastructure were not ready.
Huawei's Digital Multimedia Banking Solution, Safe Financial Cloud Solution, and the CloudFabric Cloud Data Center Network Solution, helped ICBC (Asia) to modernize its infrastructure.
The solutions improved VIP recognition services, fine-tuned its sales and marketing strategies, offered the right set of customized products with differential pricing, mitigated security risks, and offer better control with a management dashboard.
ICBC (Asia) also eliminated infrastructure bottlenecks by leveraging open standard technologies.
Traditional technologies such as EIGRP and PVST+ were replaced with Huawei's CloudEngine, USG Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW), and other devices.
Meanwhile, the Software Defined Network (SDN) controller and Agile Controller, based on Open Network Operating System (ONOS) and OpenDaylight (ODL), allowed the bank to choose the right service providers and avoid vendor lock-in.
“Huawei helped ICBC (Asia) build more open and stable ICT infrastructures. It allows the Bank's business departments to work safer and easier. With Huawei's solution in place, ICBC (Asia) achieved a major breakthrough in the diversity of DC network products, laying a solid foundation for private cloud transformation in the future,” Tang Bin, General Manager of IT department of ICBC (Asia) said.
As competition in financial services increases, ICBC (Asia) is focused on enhancing customer service. Recently, the bank deployed the mVTM system based on Huawei's IP Contact Center (IPCC), allowing customers to conduct video conferences with their financial advisors via the ICBC(Asia) apps.
Soon, ICBC (Asia) will launch a 24/7 omnichannel intelligent customer service system to answer customers' inquiries in multiple languages, including Mandarin, Cantonese, and English.