Huawei has launched its Huawei Cloud’s all-scenario smart finance solution to Africa. The solution, announced at the Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit for Africa 2023, will effectively drive the digitisation and leapfrogging development of African’s financial and banking sector.
Harrison Li, chief technology officer of Huawei Cloud: southern africa region, explains that the new solution will help African banks act as pioneers in the in the financial sector.
As Li points out, with the deepening of digital transformation in the financial and banking sectors worldwide, the “all-round cloudification” of financial services has become a trend. In Africa, he adds, this “cloudification” will also drive financial inclusion and enable the financial and banking sectors to create more social value through digital transformation.
He says that embracing cloud technologies could help African banks address one of their biggest pain-points: system stability. During daily operations, accidents such as core system breakdowns and system unavailability can cause difficulties when it comes to things like fund transfers and payments. That isn’t just inconvenient for customers, it can negatively affect the enterprises’ reputation. Cloud systems, with their various failsafes can dramatically reduce the occurrence of those breakdowns, bringing stability to the system.
Li adds that the way banks use cloud technologies is also changing. Many are moving from peripheral systems to core systems, while the technical architecture of cloud services is transiting from standardised mainframes to distributed, cloud native architecture.
Huawei Cloud has served more than 300 financial service providers around the world, including banks, companies in insurance, and players in the security and fintech sectors. It has helped each of those clients build rich experiences that foster digital transformation in the financial domain. Off the back of this experience, Li said, Huawei Cloud is able to commit to supporting financial customers quickly implement cloud migration and adapt to new scenarios, providing a one-stop solution for Africa’s financial and banking innovation.
There are several reasons it is able to do so, Li says. First, the big data and AI convergence platform of Huawei Cloud solves governance problems caused by data silos between lakes, warehouses, and AI platforms. With capabilities such as unified storage and metadata, a copy of data can be transferred between multiple engines quickly and consistently.
Secondly, Huawei’s hybrid integration platform ROMA ensures smooth, reasonable, and secure service upgrade. In addition, the smart process robots launched by Huawei Cloud and partners integrates AI, robotic process automation (RPA), and low-code capabilities, greatly improving the efficiency of processing frequent financial services.
Most importantly, its “1+N” scenario-based solution is able to meet diversified service innovation requirements of financial industry customers, Li explains.
“1” indicates Huawei Cloud’s Fintech solution. In Africa, multiple customers have benefited from it. Through the one-stop construction, release, and operation of the Mobile Money platform, applications can be rolled out within six months, helping customers quickly build technical capabilities that support services such as digital wallets, super apps, and micro-loans.
“N” refers to Huawei Cloud’s multi-channel and multi-scenario innovative solutions for the financial sector, such as artificial intelligent contact centre (AICC) and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
Li details the growth of Huawei Cloud, which now has 78 availability zones, and how it provides services for customers in more than 170 countries and regions, where companies can access to Huawei Cloud’s service easily without building new data centres.
Being customer-oriented, which is reflected in its service delivery and technical supports of all phases from planning to post-migration, Huawei Cloud will continue to tap into Africa’s digital potential, drive the digital transformation of financial and banking sectors in this continent.