Financial innovation showcase focuses on frictionless customer journey

• Beijing Financial Innovation showcased emerging new innovations in the areas of lending, data analytics, insurtech and payments (using blockchain technology) from leading fintechs, all targeted to solve inefficiencies in the traditional financial services
• Rubique, Xiaoyusan, and Hyperchain Technologies emerged in the showcase
• Rubique Technologies, operating in retail and SME lending, an online financial matchmaking platform with a simple and fast process for a wide range of loan, credit card and insurance products through an end to end model ‘ONE Plus’

The Asian Banker organised ‘Beijing Financial Innovation Showcase and Competition’ in conjunction with the Future of Finance Summit on May 25th 2018 in Beijing, China 2018. The event was designed as an international competition platform to demonstrate and explore the capabilities of leading financial technology players from China and around the world to pit their skills and solutions against each other. The event showcased innovations and market disruptions that take the thinking beyond the conventional business models towards frictionless customer journeys enabled by new collaborative models in the financial services industry across different business segments. Artificial intelligence (AI), including advances in technologies such as data intelligence and machine learning are changing the operating models in the financial services industry. The Asian Banker partnered with MEDICI, a top global innovation and insights platform, to select the top eight fintech companies to compete across six categories and present their innovations in the financial industry. Each company was given an opportunity to share a 12 minutes pitch at the event attended by a significant gathering of senior executives from financial institutions, investors and financial technology community. The judging panel comprised of highly experienced fintech industry experts, investors and senior executives from financial institutions, of which eight advisors were present at the event while few others were virtual advisors. The evaluation by the panel was based on a set of pre-decided transparent scorecard criteria. In a close competition, three fintech companies emerged on the top - Rubique Technologies, an online financial matchmaking platform from India, Xiaoyusan, a Chinese insuretech company based on big data analytics and Hyperchain Technologies that provides blockchain-based platform providing enterprise-level network solutions from China. Of these three, Rubique Technologies achieved the highest rating from the council of advisors and was declared as the winner of the cash prize of $5000.

Participating fintechs

Rubique Technologies: Founded in 2014 and operating in retail and small and medium enterprise (SME) lending, Rubique is an online financial matchmaking platform with a simple and fast process for a wide range of loan, credit card and insurance products through an end to end model ‘ONE Plus’. Built on an AI based recommendation engine, Rubique’s online credit marketplace platform integrates with the financial institutions’ (FI) systems for real-time processing and online approvals to the customers. Its online platform ‘Single Point of Truth’ includes paperless-focused features like blockchain based e-KYC, bank statement analysis, credit bureau check, credit memo generation along with seamless origination, assessment and fulfillment for loans, credit cards and insurance with real time decision-making on the application. It includes technology features of a matchmaking algorithm, advanced analytics, a lead management system, and a recommendation engine. Through its distribution system with market influencers it brings risk-averse customers, especially MSMEs, onto the platform, taking them from offline to online. The company currently operates across 32 cities in India with tie-ups with over 89 FIs for over 267 products. In the last two years it witnessed a notable growth of 500% in loans to $218 million loans in 2018, 790% rise in credit cards and revenue growth of 680%.

Xiaoyusan: Using big data, and partnering up with Chinese insurance companies, Xiaoyusan Insurance, a China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) licensed online insurance platform, designs exclusive insurance products. Its products include robo-advisory platform ‘Jing Jing’ that generates insurance advice within three seconds, intelligent underwriting system ‘Yuan Fang’ to determine the eligibility, an intelligent adjustment system that automatically calculates claims amount and ‘Woodpecker’, an intelligent risk control system that automatically generates blacklist. It provides highly simplified product purchase and claims processes which rely on WeChat, the leading Chinese social media mobile application. Xiaoyusan has established strategic partnerships with over 50 insurance companies and has more than 400 customised products on the platform, serving over eight millions of users.

Hyperchain Technologies (Hangzhou Qulian Technology): This fintech provides enterprise level blockchain platform enabled with container cloud, core algorithm and management facilities. It is fully compatible with the current open source blockchain community’s features, including smart contract models and programming interfaces. It enables enterprises to rapidly deploy, expand and configure blockchain networks based on existing cloud platforms, and perform real-time visual monitoring of the operating status of blockchain networks. It has implemented its technology across different sectors and has 30 customers, including China UnionPay, Shanghai Stock Exchange, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, among others.

CreditOn: This company offers a comprehensive digital-first product suite for SME & retail lending to banks and lending companies It has a configurable SME-specific automated credit assessment with hundreds of pre-configured variables for credit assessment with a user-friendly interface. The features include AI engine that automatically extracts data from standardised documents and machine learning based algorithm to digitally verify information for KYC compliance across data sources. The company demonstrates 15 live implementations in India, including with some leading banks.

GEO: This fintech provides intelligent end-to-end big data solutions to FIs through a one-stop intelligent financial solution for customer acquisition, fraud identification, risk grading, risk monitoring, and asset disposal. It provides credit risk level of applicants as scores to facilitate accurate identification of category. Its features include real time pre-lending anti-fraud analysis, pre-lending credit assessment and credit risk early warning system. GEO has over 300 customers with its products launched across a number of FIs and has cooperated with nearly 40 banks in China.

HedgeSPA: This Singapore based fintech brings core investment analytics platform, powered by AI, big data and cloud computing to hedge funds and institutions, empowering professional investors with asset selection features that can deliver consistent performance and loss reduction. Its features include factor-based asset selection driven by forward-looking scenarios, multi-asset and multi-frequency support for global assets and real time precise calculated results. It currently has 10 users that include Tier-1 financial institutions.

Noble Private Bank: This Chinese fintech provides a one-stop private banking mobile platform that connects high-net-worth investment advisors and customers online with features enabled by big data, and cloud computing. It targets to solve core pain points such as information asymmetry between high-net-worth customers and investment consultants, ineffective communication, low participation, poor security, and lack of trust. Its features include intelligent overseas asset allocation and smart investment advisor, a combination of AI and finance.

Qian Bao Financial Services: Specialising in the needs of small and micro merchants, covering over 200 cities, this Chinese fintech uses advanced machine learning, AI and big data to assess the credit strength of the merchants. It provides revolving line of credit and flexible repayment, low threshold, easy and user-friendly application and fast approval. It currently operates in 250 cities with 800,000 small business owners and has issued loans to 100,000 small business owners.

Summary

The competition showcased emerging new innovations in the areas of lending, data analytics, insurtech and payments (using blockchain technology) from leading fintechs, all targeted to solve inefficiencies in the traditional financial services. With focus on customers at their core strategic model, these fintechs enable significantly improved customer journeys through a seamless integration of systems and frictionless processes. Operating in niche areas with unique business collaborative models these companies are notable for facilitating a real market impact, driving a change in the industry.

“With focus on customers at their core strategic model, these fintechs enable significantly improved customer journeys through a seamless integration of systems and frictionless processes”