Taipei Fubon Bank’s Futuristic Wealth Management- ‘Smart Investments’

Taipei Fubon Bank’s Futuristic Wealth Management- ‘Smart Investments’

by FeaturedGlobal Private BankerMagazineTop Stories

Banks & Financial institutions are increasingly deploying new technology to succeed in the age of technology. However, Taipei Fubon Bank’s vision is to use digital technology to make its clients succeed.  It has an intense focus on keeping Customers-First and ensuring that technology is used to deliver more effective, easier-to-use and faster financial services & solutions to customers.  Taipei Fubon Bank President- Roman Cheng- never gets tired of pointing-out that it is not about technology, it is about creating strong UVPs and delivering great customer experiences.

This approach has led to many innovative products in recent years that have been recognized not only for the latest technology but, more importantly, for popularity with customers and resulting high usage rates.  One of these innovative products is Taipei Fubon bank’s recent flagship offering for Wealth Management customers- ‘Smart Investment’.

Smart Investment platform helps customers make better financial choices by enabling them with financial data & digital technology.  Customers can use the ‘Smart Investment’ platform to create financial plans suited to their individual needs as well as help them decide how to maximize portfolio returns by using low interest loan to invest in higher yield investments. This innovative offering is already in use by about 18K WM customers– an impressive achievement for a new product in a highly competitive Taiwan market.

Taipei Fubon Bank has been leading the new trends in Wealth management & Private banking in the last few years; and has received several recognitions for its customer focus and use of technology. Global Private Banking Innovation Awards 2020 (GPB Awards) by The Digital Banker recently recognized Taipei Fubon Bank with three major awards- the Best Private Bank, and the best private bank in AI & Big Data respectively.  Moreover, Taipei Fubon bank was adjudged ‘Highly Acclaimed’ in two more categories- Best Private Bank for Client Experience and Outstanding Technology Implementation (Back End).

“Taipei Fubon Bank is known for its tenacity in providing exceptional service to its customers. Using its core strength in technology to boost its business and serve its customers in a manner that provides great value, they have proven once again that they are second to none.”

The Global Private Banking Innovation Awards 2020 (GPB 2020) organized by The Digital Banker are highly regarded and valued in wealth management industry.  GPB Awards are judged by private wealth industry leaders and are aimed to identify and recognize the world’s best in class Private Banks, Family Offices and Wealth Managers that demonstrate elite levels of performance & creativity across Fixed Income, ESG, Structured Investments, Family Office Services, Discretionary Services, FX & Cash Management, Funds, UHNW, Islamic Finance and more. This year’s panel of judges include subject-matter experts known for their integrity and unbiased adjudication from companies such as Forrester, Protiviti and EY.

Power of AI/ ML for WM customers-‘Smart Investment’

Smart Investment platform is based on two major technologies.  Firstly the algorithms to generate & evaluate multiple scenarios and arrive at best choices for each individual customer.  The second is an automated platform using artificial neural network to detect customer repayment information & deliver timely alerts to customers.  ‘Smart Investment’ is a simple-to use but powerful platform that is able to assist all customers including those without any investment background to start on their financial management journey.

This app, the first of its kind in Taiwan, gives customers automated advice on multiple aspects of financial management. The goal is to provide relevant information to help clients in making sound financial decisions.  ‘Smart Investment’ integrates to mobile and online banking channels and constantly reviews customers’ data such as loan amount, interest payments, remaining instalments, etc.  Smart Investment is then able to recommend the best options available for each customer.  In addition, the alert system built into the Smart Investment platform gives Taipei Fubon Bank the ability to detect important issues that need urgent attention.

Taipei Fubon Bank’s nearly 18,000 customers with AUM of USD 1bn are already making better financial planning decisions through this ‘Smart Investment’ app.  These usage numbers continue to grow with more & more customers adopting the smarter way to investing!

‘Smart Investment’ is a digital application that even assists customers without any investment background to start their financial management journey.

Prosperity Across Generations 

In 2018 Taipei Fubon Bank launched the Exclusive Banking Group- a new client-centric service model catering to top-tier clients.  Based on results of customer research & insights from HNW Private Banking customers, a unique brand was created– “Prosperity Across Generations”.

Taipei Fubon Bank believes that HNW clients need the same level of service & products as corporate clients and aims at serving HNW individuals as “corporates”. Increasingly Bank’s high net worth clients, just like corporates, face complex challenges for asset and wealth management. Simple services like family asset management are necessary but no longer sufficient for the needs of these HNW clients.

Taipei Fubon Bank assists high net worth clients using a comprehensive service approach that includes both the “upstream” and the “downstream” opportunities to offer a complete investment ecosystem to its customers.

In another first for any bank in Taiwan, Taipei Fubon Bank collaborates with Lombard Odier, a 224-year-old Swiss private bank, to provide the world’s best private banking services to its customers.  With client-centric focus, investment in technology and expertise of its well-trained bankers, Taipei Fubon Bank has rapidly developed itself into a world-class provider of private banking services exclusive clients in Taiwan.

“Prosperity Across Generations requires wealth management with relevant information, timeliness and global perspectives for our clients. Taipei Fubon Bank is focused on providing these to its customers so that they can focus on their own businesses and families.”

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>> To download the print magazine version of this article, click HERE.

>>To read more about this story and other exclusive features about the global private banking landscape, download the latest issue of Global Private Banker Magazine HERE.

Taipei Fubon Bank Using Robo to Help Clients Boost their Wealth

Taipei Fubon Bank: Using ‘Robo’ to Help Clients Boost their Wealth

by FeaturedMagazineSponsored ContentTop Stories

In this day and age, every company in the finance industry knows that a smart approach is to leverage the power of fintech to be able to provide premium services while boosting the bottom line. However, only a few companies have the combined technical proficiency and unwavering grit to do it. Taipei Fubon Bank is one of them – and does it with flying colours. Because of this, Taipei Fubon Bank was awarded Winner, Best Customer Experience – Social Media; Highly Acclaimed, Best Robo Advisory Experience and Highly Acclaimed, Best Use of Data and Analytics at the Digital CX Awards 2020 by The Digital Banker.

Emerging triumphant among the more than 200 nominations in various awards categories received this year, Taipei Fubon Bank’s win is no small feat considering  the  top calibre line up of judges at  this year’s  awards ceremony. Among them are seasoned professionals from companies such as Forrester, EY, Fuji Xerox, Bain & Company, Wipro Digital and KPMG.

“Within our organisation, we always strive to provide better service for our customers. One of the most significant actions we took was to leverage fintech and ETFs with low cost to boost our business and serve our customers better. We feel absolutely honored to receive this award as it is a clear testament of the success of our mission, which we continue to improve and build upon each day,” said Daniel Cheng, Senior Vice President, Digital Banking Department at Taipei Fubon Bank.

Michael Lee, Vice President for Marketing Support Department-Retail Banking also added: “As we continually communicate with our customers, we will continue to adopt different marketing communications at different touch points to ensure that we   respond   to  their  needs in a timely manner. This award serves as our inspiration to use data analytics in a manner that is responsible, accurate and value adding.”

Building an ecosystem for users’ life and financial needs via LINE

To make the dream of becoming users’ best friend come true, Taipei Fubon Bank partnered with LINE, Taiwan’s biggest communication app platform, to manage its official account.

By founding an ecosystem related to users’ life and financial needs   via LINE, Taipei Fubon Bank was able to provide functions and services users need to bring profits to the company, lower the gap between consumers and the bank, and create a win- win proposition for both.

The services include card-application, 1 click to adjust credit, online coupon to offline spending, AI consumer service, robo-advisor, digital account, and so on. The bank approaches its users and get  their feedback through a series of anthropomorphic and phenomenon-based marketing strategies and action plans.

Taipei Fubon Bank has gained 1 million friends on first day and reached 4 million friends in the past 8 months. Over 20% of 0.4 million J card applications were from LINE, and this brought in over 30 million business revenue.

Owing to the combination of CRM data and information users gave via LINE, the bank can analyse users’ exact needs for target marketing and personalised services to bring in profits. By engaging consumers smartly, Taipei Fubon Bank has not only increased its revenue from cards but also managed to cross-sell other products and services such as insurance, deposit, foreign currency, and investments.

Nano Investment – the largest robo-advisor service in Taiwan

Taipei Fubon Bank, one of the most trusted banks in Taiwan, used emerging financial technologies to create the ultimate consumer experience  of “banking in all aspects of life”.

Taipei Fubon Bank collaborated with the largest online asset management company in UK and Europe, Nutmeg, and launched “Nano investment”, the first customised global ETF robo-advisor product in Taiwan in April 2019. Nano helps Taiwanese customers enjoy the premium world-class wealth management service and earn stable portfolio growth with the recipe of “SELECT” (Simple, Easy, Long-term, Expertise, low-Cost and Technology).

Nano Investment builds highly customised portfolios for customers. Additionally, Nano Investment adopts online interactive conversation to help customers complete the KYC and onboarding processes in an easy and natural way with the use of artificial intelligence.

Among the key features of “Nano Investment” are as follows:

Online Interactive Conversations. Taipei Fubon Bank adopts online interactive conversation to help customers complete the KYC and onboarding processes in a more easy and natural way.

Low-cost ETF. “Nano Investment” is the only intelligent investment service with a low-cost ETF portfolio in Taiwan.

Fractional Shares. Nano Investment uses the technology of “Fractional Shares” to improve portfolio efficiency and lower the threshold for customers to initiate their investment plans.

Automatic Rebalancing. Nano Investment rebalances clients’ portfolios automatically while the climate of global capital market changes to deliver stable and sustainable return to investors.

Since launching the service, Nano Investment has demonstrated Taipei Fubon Bank’s strength in fintech. To date, Nano Investment has acquired more than 18,000 customers invested and over 98% of these customers enjoyed positive returns from their portfolios, even during an ongoing volatility due to the trade war between United States and China and the panics of COVID-19.

“Nano helps Taiwanese customers enjoy the premium world-class wealth management service.”

Nano Customer Journey – Visualisation Dashboard

The Nano dashboard relies on data visualisation technology to “interact” with Nano Investments customer data and analyse the customer journey through changes in data in real time. At the same time, it adjusts to changing conditions based on channel, product and customer considerations. This high-speed tool that people can use to invest on their own, backed by the effective management of the customer journey, has already begun enhancing customer experience. It has also helped provide regular account holders with high-quality financial services.

Through customer journey analysis, the following benefits were achieved:

1. Enhanced customer experience

  • No breakpoints in the customer experience. Through the monitoring systems, abnormal values are detected immediately and specific points in the customer experience are addressed, leading to improvements in processes and ongoing gains in capacity and effectiveness.
  • Better communication with customers. System continues to communicate with customers based on their customer journeys, with different marketing approaches used at different contact points on the journey.

2. Triggered management teams to be more efficient

  • Unlike a lengthy communication process happening in the past, the real-time dashboard used by Nano Investments that compiles information on customer segments, products and channels and relies on data to manage these different areas, gives each department a clear picture of up-to-the-minute performance. Managers can quickly make key decisions without the need for extensive meetings, resulting in better customer experience and more efficient management.

3. Created competitive advantages

  • Nano Investments’ customer journey dashboard monitors customer profiles, product results and channel management to gauge performance. When indicators in any of those three areas trend lower, the responsible unit can react immediately and take corrective action. This rapid response time and attention to all contact points gives the system a real competitive advantage.

 

Download the magazine print version of this article here.

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Read more about the winners at the Digital CX Awards 2020 here.

artificial intelligence banking - tdb

Artificial Intelligence in Banking: Boon or Bane?

by FeaturedMagazineTop Stories

Tech titans Elon Musk of Tesla Motors and Jack Ma of Alibaba recently had a clash of opinions about Artificial Intelligence (AI), the latter being a staunch advocate, while the former, strongly opposing its inevitable arrival and integration into our lives.

When it comes to AI in banking, Jack Ma finds an ally in the financial services industry where discussions, articles, and reports about the huge opportunity that AI presents abound. After all, the aggregate potential cost savings using AI applications is estimated to reach $447 billion by 2023, $416 billion of which will go to front and middle office accounting.

The aggregate potential cost savings using AI applications is estimated to reach $447 billion by 2023

How AI gets to the core of banking services

While tech giants usually get the lion’s share of attention when it comes to cutting-edge technology, it is now the banking industry that slowly steals the limelight for its various endeavours involving AI. From stories about automation and how it would cut jobs, to start-up acquisitions, to how banks are now using AI to transform the customer experience with frictionless, 24/7 customer interactions.

Case in point: In 2016, DBS launched digibank, India’s first mobile-only bank. Breaking away from conventional banking norms, digibank is a completely paperless, signatureless and branchless bank. In order to provide customer support 24×7 on a full digital bank, DBS leverages futuristic AI technology to deliver hassle-free banking via conversational technology. Aptly named digibot, the AI-driven chatbot interfaces with its customers, allowing the bank to onboard new customers and manage ever-increasing service demands.

Another great example is UnionBank of the Philippines’ (UBP) chatbot service named @TalktoRafa, the first and most powerful chatbot service in the Philippine banking space.  It has the most relevant features and skills attuned to customer needs.  It is aimed to deliver witty, personal and accurate solutions to their most common needs.

While tech giants usually get the lion’s share of attention when it comes to cutting-edge technology, it is now the banking industry that slowly steals the limelight for its various endeavours involving AI.

ai in banking - tdb

Innovations in Machine Learning

Beyond chatbots, machine learning is another big area of innovation.

Taipei Fubon Bank has 4.11 million regular account holders and around 390,000 wealth management customers. Every year, some 1% of regular deposit customers get “promoted” to wealth management status through various methods and gain access to the services afforded to wealth management customers. To come up with a more efficient and scientific method to identify the potential value of customers and boost their activity with the bank (leading to higher status), Taipei Fubon Bank resorted to machine learning technology to predict customer value.

Because the value of customers has been underestimated, many customers were not cultivated by the wealth management team and only had access to the services and experiences made available to regular account holders, focused primarily on online services such as online banking and mobile banking. They did not receive personalised wealth management services or investment recommendations.

After the value of customers was identified more accurately, the customers who were promoted to wealth management status received priority treatment in offline (branches) and online channels. Offline, they were offered exclusive financial planning services supported by dedicated financial consultants, received invitations to VIP events, and receive gifts when visiting a branch. Online, they were sent regular newsletters with the latest investing, product and market information. They also received personalised product recommendations, wealth management perks and special offers. These multitude of online and offline activities and benefits forged a powerful omni-channel VIP experience for customers.

Similarly, Taishin Bank has also launched its Machine Learning initiative. For Taishin, relying only on traditional, structured customer data, from demographics to transaction history, has reached its limits for enhancing customer engagement. Unstructured conversation data from call centre reveal opportunistic life transitions, such as starting a family and buying a house, are defining moments of human experience that would complete the whole personalised customer journey. Taishin needed new supporting infrastructure and motivating use cases to maximise the value of hybrid data and drive business innovation.

While still in its relative infancy, AI is already changing the way traditional banks operate. Banks and customers alike will become winners with AI.

Beginning as a cross-business-unit collaboration, Taishin was the first bank in Taiwan to develop and apply speech-to-text and text-mining technologies across business units, from call centre to business intelligence development, digital banking, payment services, and information technology. It leveraged speech-to-text and text-mining technologies to create the hybrid data source, composed of static and dynamic, structured and unstructured data. Collectively, it increased the work efficiency at the customer call centre through the automation of call type labelling. It also enhanced the customer experience of Taishin’s web and mobile applications by resolving trending issues in customer calls. Furthermore, monetisation of its hybrid data is increasing due to life storytelling marketing strategies employed by the bank. What they do is to proactively reach out to each customer at the point of their life transitions.

The evolution of AI in banking

While still in its relative infancy, AI is already changing the way traditional banks operate. Few years from now, the face of traditional banking would completely change as we usher in a revolutionary new age of FinTech. As banks aim to achieve high-level understanding of AI, this will unlock a myriad of innovative services such as customer-service automation, personalisation, enhanced security, process optimisation and pattern recognition. Banks and customers alike will become winners with AI.

 

>> To read more about this story and other exclusive features about the digital banking landscape, download the latest issue of The Digital Banker Magazine HERE.

taipei fubon

How Taipei Fubon Bank Handles Wealth Management in the Digital Era

by FeaturedMagazineSponsored ContentTop Stories

Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank won six major awards in The Digital Banker’s 2nd Annual Global Retail Banking Innovation Awards, reaffirming the bank’s commitment to customer service and excellence in digital banking innovation.

One of the top banks in Taiwan, Taipei Fubon Bank is well-known for creating innovative products and has been a leader in using AI, mobile, digital and blockchain technologies to improve banking customer experience. The Digital Banker and co-judges from PWC, KPMG, Forrester and Xerox, selected Taipei Fubon Bank as a winner for Best Customised Mobile Banking, Outstanding Machine Learning Initiative, Outstanding IT Transformation and Excellence in Customer Privacy & Protection.

The Bank also received “Highly Acclaimed” for Excellence in Digital Wealth Management and Outstanding Digital Innovation in SME Banking. Roman Cheng, President of Taipei Fubon Bank said that “our goal is to keep learning from customers, business partners as well as from competition”.  He hopes that this discipline of learning helps his team in designing products and services suitable for customers and this process is the primary underpinning of Taipei Fubon Bank’s Digital Transformation success.

“Our goal is to keep learning from customers, business partners as well as from competition.”

Customised Mobile Banking

The above culture led the bank to re-launch Fubon Mobile Banking in mid-2018 and was immediately endorsed by strong customer response, transforming it into the leading and the most comprehensive mobile banking app in the Taiwan market.  The bank also offered high level of customisation to mobile banking users under the theme “My Screen, My Way”, “My Account, My Way” and “My Family, My Way”.

The design of this mobile app was based on exhaustive user interviews and user-experience workshops with the frequent mobile banking users. The findings of this study revealed several behavioural insights that were then used to design the mobile banking platform.  Examples of unique services are ‘Goal-Based Savings’ and ‘Life Accounting’ for Gen-Y customers.

AI and Machine Learning

Taipei Fubon Bank is also a leader in Big Data Analytics, optimising its operations as well as enhancing its customer service using predictive models.  It has successfully implemented Machine Learning Predictive Modelling that leverages data from several internal and external sources. The model has already proven its strong predictive power by forecasting next-best-product for wealth management customers.

Taipei Fubon Bank is using Digital & Data to not only enhance customer experience but also to improve security & privacy of its customers.

Wealth Management for the Digital Era

 Taipei Fubon Bank has been actively developing financial technologies and products to service the rapidly changing needs of the digital generation. It is also leveraging efficiency of digital channel to deliver superior financial services to mass market customers.

The bank collaborated with Europe’s largest online asset management firm – Nutmeg, to launch “Nano Investment”. This platform enabled access to WM services to Younger as well as low-ticket size investors.  Investors with as little as USD100 may commence their investment journey and build a portfolio customised to their individual needs.  The simplicity and control this wealth management platform provides to customers has been widely acclaimed and an increasing number of customers are joining the Nano platform.

Customer Privacy & Protection

 Taipei Fubon Bank is using Digital & Data to not only enhance customer experience but also to improve security & privacy of its customers.  A strong example of this is “Automatic Personal Data De-identification Platform“ implemented in 2018 to ensure highest level of security to customer’s private information.  Taipei Fubon Bank is among a few banks in Asia and the first in Taiwan to have implemented such innovation for customer data protection.

 

>> To read more about this story and other exclusive features about the digital banking landscape, download the latest issue of The Digital Banker Magazine HERE.

 

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