Samsung SDS on Monday launched a financial platform powered by blockchain and artificial intelligence, designed to help the local banking industry to cut cost, minimize security threats and streamline financial procedures, the firm said.
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| Ryu Hong-jun, finance business division leader of Samsung SDS, speaks at a press conference to announce the launch of the blockchain-powered financial infrastructure Nexfinance in Seoul on Monday. (Samsung SDS) |
Dubbed “Nexfinance,” the new platform features user applications that would automate a customer’s process of tracking and integrating financial records from different financial companies, getting product recommendations, claiming insurance and managing credit card loyalty points.
Nexfinance uses three applications combined with a chatbot function to help financial companies recommend and sell products online tailored to a customer’s financial conditions.
One of the applications is called “Financial Concierge,” a personal financial management platform that harvests information from different banking companies. There is also Digital Identity, which allows personal identification to be encrypted on digital distributed ledgers and validated on different banks. Financial products will be analyzed and recommended through the algorithm-powered AI Virtual Secretary.
Separate from this, customers will be able to process insurance claims without manual work by clerks at an insurance company, hospitals or by customers themselves, as long as the hospital is part of a blockchain network, the company explained.
Such applications will be served through financial companies that use the Nexfinance platform.
For financial firms, using Nexfinance will be a step forward for digital innovation, according to Samsung SDS officials in a press conference held in its headquarters in Seoul on Monday.
“Financial companies would be able to verify its new banking technology in a swift manner, gain impetus for new banking service implementation and enlarge customer database pool,” said Kim Young-kwon, digital finance strategy team leader at Samsung SDS.
Kim added Nexfinance tackled slow transaction speed in public blockchain, using a private blockchain system run on the Nexledger Consensus Algorithm.
Samsung SDS is an information technology service provider unit of the Samsung conglomerate. Since last year, the company has unveiled plans to adopt blockchain technology on the shipping platform.
Samsung SDS is currently involved in a project by the Korea Federation of Banks to form a blockchain-based ID authentication infrastructure used among all member banks. Samsung Card, a banking unit of Samsung conglomerate, was Samsung SDS’ first partner to form blockchain-based financial infrastructure.
By Son Ji-hyoung
(consnow@heraldcorp.com)
