Gartner, Inc. has announced the winners of the 2020 Gartner Eye on Innovation Award for financial services in the Asia Pacific region. The award recognizes innovative use of digital technology-enabled capabilities, products or services to highlight “best-in-class” financial industry initiatives launched within the past 12 months and to offer insight about developments in digital innovation.

The finalists presented their case studies during a special virtual event on 2 November. Ping An Bank was selected as the regional 2020 Gartner Eye on Innovation Award winner by a poll of industry peers. Star Union Dai-ichi Life and Eastspring Investments were also named as winners.

Regional Winner:

Ping An Bank (China) – The bank successfully launched an Intelligent Risk Control Platform in 2019 to address issues associated with the risk control management of its corporate credit business. It uses granular business data, external data and other support to form labels through business rules, model operation, industry risk and policy rules, giving a panoramic view of customer risk to improve the analysis quality and management level of credit investigation and review. AI technology is fully integrated into the platform, including customer mapping technology, intelligent evaluation models, OCR image recognition technology and other AI applications, to bring users the ultimate experience with advanced technology. In customer approval process alone, efficiency has improved by more than 30%. The single loan time of a standard business has shortened from five hours to five minutes. The platform has reconstructed the public credit system and innovated in intelligent decision-making, control, lending, early warning, management and customer risk view.

Additional Award Recipients:

Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance (India) – The life insurance provider embarked on a project to use geospatial data analytics to optimize its pan-India distribution, particularly to improve the allocation of field resources across branches and to reduce high-labor intensive activity. The solution involves data extraction to provide a geographical view of its distribution points across the country; algorithmic clustering to cluster geographically close distribution points; and economic rationalization of data to classify distribution points according to market potential. Among other benefits, the solution led to the efficient deployment of manpower, reducing the travel time of 2,000 employees by more than 20% and reducing time to market by 20 days.

Eastspring Investments (Singapore) – In collaboration, BNP Paribas Securities Services and Eastspring Investments have created a platform that uses blockchain technology to capture exchange traded derivatives (ETD) trades real-time and maintain a fee registry to calculate correct broker fees, working in partnership with a local, Singaporean fintech company. In asset management, operational activities to support the trading of ETDs are complicated, requiring asset managers to invest significant resources. Large teams are required to manually correct the high volume of trade breaks. The solution developed offers a unique source of truth for broker fees and ETD trades. Users will be able to access transparent real-time data and enjoy operational optimization by plugging into the shared digital ledger. The solution is designed with the technological advantages of blockchain in mind, such as being secure through consensus (use of military-level cryptography requiring user verification to prevent unwanted changes), counterparty risk mitigation (no reliance on any party but the shared digital ledger), scalability and compatibility.

Finalists:

Ant Group (China) – The payment services provider launched an intelligent claims assistance system to solve the challenges it has with handling claims for more than 100 million insured users of its online mutual-aid platform Xiang Hu Bao. It offers the first AI assistance system for automatic claims audit in the field of critical diseases insurance that has been implemented on a large scale. Using OCR, natural language processing, knowledge graphs and more, claims applications are automatically reviewed. The system has a smart medical documents camera, which is the first smart camera solution for life insurance claims that has been used on a large scale (more than 100,000 users/times). By integrating the compression model into Alibaba’s mobile and online payment platform Alipay, it can identify 107 types of medical credentials in real-time; intercepts submissions that will be rejected due to image quality problems; filters out forged documents and unqualified claims; and ensures the completeness of claims documents.

Cathay United Bank (Taiwan) – As part of Cathay United Bank’s (CUB) commitment to continuous innovation and quality customer service, the bank created a data ecosystem to drive innovative financial services by integrating offline, online, internal and external data through customers’ transactions. The ecosystem includes the bank’s Cathay Shield data engine that offers a one stop risk platform for data collection, analysis models and user interfaces, as well as the collection of new data from outside the banking industry to create new opportunities for cross-industry digital cooperation. The ecosystem also incorporates future strategies in data-as-a-service (DaaS) to improve customer-centric services via an e-commerce insurance platform.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (Australia) – The bank introduced a new Coronavirus Money Plan feature in the CommBank app in June 2020 to support more than six million mobile customers through the pandemic. It points them to practical, simple, relevant and actionable guidance and tools to better plan and manage their finances during this difficult time. It is personalized for each customer based on their circumstances and level of impact. They can assess their current circumstances, find additional resources for financial support and determine how to build up an emergency buffer with the tools and features already available in the CommBank app. The solution was designed, developed and implemented within six weeks by a unique multi-disciplinary team of data, behavioral and experimental scientists, as well as experience design and financial wellbeing experts.

HDFC Life Insurance (India) – The insurer embarked on a selfie journey for customers, realizing that quality photographs captured during customer on-boarding contain useful information that is generally left unused. It developed a suite of five solutions using vision AI to simplify the online sales journey and make it appealing to the younger selfie generation. These five solutions combine at multiple points of the sales journey to extract customer data, with limited data inputting required from the customer. This eliminates many steps in the customer journey, making it easier and more seamless. The initial pilot phase has demonstrated some promising measurable benefits. In particular, the Selfie Quote tool has been very effective in customer acquisition – the insurer’s distribution partner has generated more than 3,000 leads, translating into more than 175 new customers and a business of INR 45.06 lakhs in a month.

National Payments Corporation of India – The payment services provider developed a new payment system called RuPay Contactless to help to transform India’s cash-based economy into a digital economy. The EMV-based, open loop card and additional stored-value wallet functionality is fully interoperable across all categories of merchants. It not only provides contactless payment options, but introduces wallet-based contactless payments (offline payments) and service area features for merchant/operators to offer specific services such as a monthly pass, loyalty points, access pass, etc. These functionalities mean customers no longer have to carry multiple closed loop cards and can use their debit/credit/prepaid cards for very quick large value payments (LVPs). Since it launched in 2019, more than seven million RuPay Contactless Cards have been issued by more than 30 major banks. Major transit operators such as Delhi Metro, Mumbai Metro, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation, Kochi Metro Rail Limited are adopting as a default payment option, as well as all upcoming transit and smart city projects.

UnionBank of the Philippines – Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are a key engine for growth and innovation in the Philippines, yet they still find it difficult to gain access to the financing they need to start or scale their business. To plug the gap, UBX (UnionBank’s fintech arm), together with OneConnect, built an end-to-end digital lending marketplace called SeekCap that allows MSMEs to quickly search, compare and apply for credit digitally and enjoy fast approval within a day. Through SeekCap, multiple lenders can on board their loan products onto one platform, allowing borrowers to choose and apply for the solution that best suits their business needs. The turnaround time for loan approvals has drastically shortened, compared with traditional loan applications. Since its launch in late 2019, SeekCap has registered over 10,900 MSMEs and processed over Php213 million in loan applications.

Award submissions were assessed using a robust and dynamic framework to ensure that the assessment process is pertinent and objective. The Gartner Awards Framework (GAF) is used as a structured model of assessment that enables participating organizations to be benchmarked against world-class performance standards. The GAF consists of specialized assessment modules pertaining to the evaluation criteria for each of the submissions. The criteria and subcriteria provide a robust set of requirements that are used as the methodology for benchmarking and learning among the participating organizations.

The identification of a Gartner award winner or finalist is not an endorsement by Gartner of any company, vendor, product or service.