CTBC Bank Co’s (中國信託銀行) efforts to develop big data analysis were recognized yesterday as the company won the gold prize for data-driven value creation at the eASIA Awards.
The company’s submission, CTBC Data Analytics Transformation, beat 12 teams from five Asian nations, including five from Taiwan, and was the only local financial company take home a top prize.
The award is the culmination of CTBC Bank’s efforts to develop new and promising use for its big data analysis, including internal hackathons.
Photo courtesy of CTBC Bank
The company aims to secure its digital competitiveness in the next few decades with its commitment to big data research, as well as further automation and digitization, it said.
“Data has become the new oilfield for businesses as they extract and refine business intelligence and market insights,” said Friedman Wang, executive vice president of the bank’s global retail credit risk management division.
In its submission, the lender demonstrated how big data analysis laid the foundation of its new service offerings, such as a smart mortgage app that combines property prices with loan payment estimates.
Other new services include a big data-driven investment portfolio planning and management tool for mutual funds and insurance policies, as well as an online platform that can approve urgent loans in as little as 30 minutes.
The lender is also exploring other frontiers, such as augmented reality (AR), which it demonstrated at its booth at the World Congress on Information Technology in Taipei this week.
The bank said that its new AR application allows people to see computer-generated overlays of foreign-exchange data and price conversions in their field of view at retail outlets, a feature that is geared toward tourists.
Organized by the Asia Pacific Council for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business, a non-profit, non-governmental organization, the annual event has been held yearly since 2003.
This year’s event for the first time included financial technology (fintech), an emerging field that has seen rapid development among Taiwan’s biggest financial companies.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day