E.SUN has been investing in financial technology for a long time. We have a tech team comprising more than 1,300 technologists to oversee digital developments, smart applications, information research and development, and information security management. Our technologists improve the performance of digital financial technologies through cross-team collaboration. In this process, continual improvement is a must. If information is analogous to the human nervous system, then AI is the brain, digital applications represent our hands and feet, and information security is the immune system. Each of these components is indispensable. E.SUN has attained fruitful outcomes in the areas of smart finance, inclusive finance, and scenario-based finance, being not only the first bank in Taiwan to incorporate artificial intelligence into its various business operations, but also the first to develop its core systems with open-source cloud native technologies and
a microservice architecture. E.SUN Bank's digital customer growth exceeded 1.5-fold in the past three years, with over mutual fund investment, unsecured personal loan applications, 99% of foreign exchange transactions, and 88% of securities account opened/completed through digital channels. A detailed description of our achievements is as follows:
■ Digital infrastructure
Capitalizing on the technological capacity of E.SUN, we continue to develop infrastructures for digital transformation and endeavor to fulfill our sustainability commitments by adopting eco-friendly practices, conserving energy, and creating the value of environmental sustainability.
| Strategy Directions |
| Take advantage of cloud services, improve the speed and quality of IT support services, strengthen security control and improve user satisfaction, and gradually achieve the goal of net zero carbon emissions. |
| Strengthen the application of digital tools to promote collaboration and increase team productivity. |
| Build a new type of WAN connection architecture for overseas branches and strengthen the quality of digital infrastructures. |
| Continue to promote cloud-native systems to increase scalability, focusing particularly on packaging microservices into system containers for automated management. |
| Establish a Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team to strengthen the quality of maintenance and management. |
| Develop an integrated voice platform in-house, collect new technologies and applications, and rapidly iterate various smart voice services to keep up with market trends. |
| Simulate human behaviors through software robots to automatically perform repetitive routine operations, and eliminate breakpoints in the interface between systems and internal and external platforms to relieve system development resources. |
■ Protecting Patented Technology
As a pioneer of financial technology and digital transformation, E.SUN must protect its intellectual property and increase the capacity for technological innovation. Therefore, E.SUN adopted the Taiwan Intellectual Property Management System (TIPS) in 2020, and passed the TIPS A-Level verification in 2020 and 2021. In addition, we improve the competitive advantages of our services and technologies by implementing intellectual property risk assessments in the R&D process, patent proposal review mechanisms, proposal rewards, intellectual property-related promotion and education, and talent training, etc.
As at the end of 2021, E.SUN Bank has submitted nearly 200 patent applications for payment, payment collection, identity verification, information control, and information security features, and subsequently applied them in innovative financial services, including Extremely Fast Loan and cardless payment services. E.SUN will continue to strengthen the cornerstone of its business development by protecting the information intellectual property rights of its various core operations, and continue to improve its corporate governance practices, so as to advance toward sustainable development.
【Patents granted in E.SUN】
|
Invention patent |
Utility patent |
Design patent |
| Announced in 2021 |
13 |
20 |
- |
| As of the end of 2021 |
30 |
57 |
11 |
| Smart voice navigation |
This application recognizes a speaker's intent. Customers "ask a question" to interact with a customer service bot. Using this application reduces customers' waiting time by 2.6 times. |
| e-Click loan |
This is the nation's first fully digitalized process loan. As we continue to optimize our loan application process, 96% of loans are now applied via our e-Click Loan service, and 98% of loan applications are reviewed automatically. |
| Security threats intelligence and monitoring |
Using robotic process automation (RPA) to improve the process by which we manage our information security intelligence and monitor our information security, can effectively reduce 93% of the time and cost we spend on maintaining information security operations. |
| Image recognition for wire transfer forms |
An image recognition model combining AI deep learning is developed in-house to handle wire transfers more efficiently. This model improved our service efficiency by 13% and freed up 30% of human resources. |
| E.SUN Wallet |
This is an all-in-one digital platform providing payment services, services required on a daily basis, and banking services. We continue to develop the interface of this app so that it offers personalization services that give customers greater autonomy. The app has accumulated more than one million downloads. |
|
E.SUN Mobile Banking |
E.SUN's mobile banking app allows users to easily and consistently experience personalized and intelligent services. Digitally active users of E.SUN's mobile banking app have exceeded 70%, and the average number of sign ins surpassed the record of leading banks in Asia. |
■ E.SUN Mobile Banking
E.SUN Bank continues to develop and update functions of the E.SUN Mobile Banking, and strives to integrate all digital financial services through the app, allowing all customers to enjoy an easy, consistent, and personalized experience when they have different needs. We further add value through AI and create personalized interactions, which allow everyone to easily control digital banking in their lives in the palm
of their hands. By upgrading Wealth Management Express to provide wealth management customers with consistent services from online to offline and providing "transfer again" and "diversified verification" among other personalized services, we strive to make E.SUN Mobile Banking app a thoughtful assistant that belongs to everyone.
(1)Transfer again
Use of the "Transfer Again" function has increased by more than 20% in recent years and is the most commonly used function. We observed that customers often repeatedly make transfers to the same account. With the rapid transfer function "Transfer Again," customers can find information on transfers made in the past in the transaction details, and automatically import the beneficiary, debit account number, amount, and remarks, shortening the transfer process from 2 minutes to 20 seconds.
(2)Diversified verification
Our mobile banking app has a large number of customers with different needs and habits. It provides at least 5 verification methods, including voice OTP, SMS OTP, touch ID, simple passwords, and graphical passwords. Customers can choose the method they are most accustomed to when logging in or making a transaction. On average quick login services are used over 10 million times per month. Besides significantly shortening the operating time of customers, it also increases the success rate of transactions.
