Group announced several key milestones, including its inaugural AI guidelines, at its recent Annual Conference on Technology, which saw over 2,000 people participate in inclusive innovation

TAIPEI, Oct. 5, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — As technology reshapes financial institutions worldwide, companies with strong technological capabilities are positioned to take the lead. Underscoring this important role technology is playing, Cathay Financial Holdings (Cathay FHC) recently held its Annual Conference on Technology on September 20, centering on the theme of “Integrating Technology for an Inclusive New Intelligence.” Attracting over 2,000 participants both online and offline, this year’s Conference focused on the “ABCDEs” of major technologies and trends — AI, Blockchain, Cloud, Data, and Ecosystems.

Senior Vice President of Cathay FHC, Marcus Yao, said during the opening, “With the financial environment constantly changing and posing new challenges, Cathay FHC has shored up robust digital resilience by embracing various emerging technologies and enterprises from early on.” He also mentioned that digital transformation is an “endurance race with constantly changing goals and no finish line.” Having begun its major push for digital transformation eight years ago with the Digital Data and Technology Development Center (DDT), Cathay FHC has been empowering the digital, data, and technology sectors for some time. As a result of these efforts, the total digital users across all businesses under the Cathay Group now exceed 8.6 million. “The customer is the biggest winner of our transformative achievements. As we move forward, Cathay FHC will continue to embrace a consumer-centric strategy, an international perspective, and an open-minded attitude. By favoring collaboration over competition, we will continue to drive value for consumers with new and innovative approaches far into the future.”

In addition to core financial technologies, this year’s Conference explored novel innovations in service experiences and financial oversight, while also serving as a forum for advancing industry dialogue on technological integration and cultural inclusivity. While AI tools such as ChatGPT have emerged recently, Cathay FHC has invested in AI and digital technologies for several years, and the Group unveiled its first AI governance principles during the Conference. The Group also took the opportunity to announce strategic projects leveraging Federated Learning and Synthetic Data, which not only enhance the depth and breadth of data but also ensure data security and customer privacy. Lastly, Cathay FHC unveiled its new large language model with RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) that drives its cloud knowledge consultant platform, offering automated real-time Q&A services, such as design and evaluation topics for the three major public clouds.

In the blockchain realm, Cathay FHC has forged alliances across banking, property insurance, electric vehicles, and other industries to create synergies by leveraging the technology. Using cross-chain technology and integrating Oracle to connect real-world data outside of the blockchain, these partnerships have enabled data exchanges between different alliance chains, thereby developing more financial products and creating industry value. As the Group charges ahead, it is continuing to foster blockchain partnerships, including around digital assets and decentralized identity applications, and is embracing international alliances across domains to advance the industry and accelerate adoption of web3 technologies.

In the cloud space, Cathay FHC has developed a new generation of insurance cloud platform — Product Factory — that creates new insurance products and supports the speed of online digital channels. The technology uses microservice architecture and low-code, which provides high performance, high availability, and scalability to cater to the diverse needs of the digital age and provide policyholders with a more comprehensive, personalized insurance service. Additionally, Cathay FHC has ventured from finance to the medical field, creating the next-generation cloud-based electronic medical record platform iFHIR Center, which converts commonly used unstructured electronic medical records in hospitals to the international standard FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) format to facilitate medical information exchange. The iFHIR Center integrates cloud architecture, a microservice design, a case format conversion engine, an electronic medical record exchange, and top-notch data security. The Group’s future direction will be to continue expanding cross-industry and cross-scenario applications, as a means of developing the financial-medical ecosystem and accelerating the transformation of the medical industry.

Cathay FHC took the lead in the entrepreneurial community to host the first tech conference organized by Taiwan’s financial industry in 2020, focusing on fintech transformation and technological innovation. With significant acclaim from multiple parties, Cathay’s four annual conferences to date have attracted tens of thousands of participants. This year’s event saw the largest cooperative group lineup ever with over 10 tech-friendly Taiwan-based groups, and numerous fintech experts attended for face-to-face exchanges, making the event impactful for the finance industry — and raising the bar for technological integration and inclusivity.