Jason Wang, Executive Director of Financial Services and Insurance, Huawei and Chen Zhentao CTO of Financial Services and Insurance, Huawei

Non-stop banking underlines what traditional bankers look at to provide convenient 24-hour, lifestyle-driven banking services. It’s a clear banking move that more and more banks want to provide much more safe, simple, agile services to the customer and obviously, Non-stop banking is the key area to enable financial system chains up and operating in real-time.

Non-stop banking is built on the four pillars of zero-downtime, zero-trust, zero-touch and zero-wait, the zeros redefining resilience. Non-stop banking brings about a digital future of non-stop service, development and innovation. The key is the digital platform that connects all finance-related businesses and their own unique customer value ecosystems. 

“In our experience – and Huawei has been involved in the evolution of FSI for many years – non-stop, lifestyle banking has become a key offering in areas where mobility is established and it is possible to provide convenient 24-hour banking. Non-stop banking is unquestionably a viable option for connected South African consumers and an option for the presently unbanked as communications infrastructure continues evolving,” says ZhenTao Chen, CTO, FSI Huawei Regional.

“We’ve been through the iterations of Bank 1.0, with branches a primary touch point. Bank 2.0 tested the emergence of self-service banking and after-hours availability and the era of Bank 3.0 was heralded in by the smartphone in 2007. Now, we are in the age of Bank 4.0, a seamless, integrated, convenient, multichannel, real-time experience that adds intelligence based on AI technology; it continues to evolve as digital transformation’s grip becomes established.

“A financial services provider is at the core of an ecosystem of different parties in a chain of providers who differentiate themselves through their customer offering. Competitive edge and such basics as best possible transaction turnaround speed are part of their value proposition.”

Chen says that any discussion around financial services must realise an FSI conversation is synonymous with IT or ICT, so the question around enough maturity in the collaboration between the ICT and FSI industries to bring about a digital future of non-stop banking services is an extraneous one. However, he raises the potential challenge of leveraging from the vast international pool of tech knowledge for business value, plus AI is still a leading consideration given its application across such platform essentials as cloud, cybersecurity, storage and data management.

Asked about the perceptions surrounding vendor lock-in, Chen says:

“Huawei technology is based on open direction like our solutions of network, storage, cloud, database, etc.” continues Chen. “Which meaning it’s very easy for Huawei technology working with current IT environment and avoiding vendor lockin. Beside this, based on our project experience, we can help our FSI customers to improve performance for 30% and reduce cost for 30% which is good for reducing total cost of ownership and either reducing or reallocating budget spend.

Chen says people and skills cannot be a footnote, and knowledge is for technology professionals of all ages. “We help them develop and upskill their people and talent to grow their organisations’ capabilities and value,” concludes Chen.

Jason Wang jason.ww@huawei.com

Chen Zhentao chenzhentao2@huawei.com