Challenging ‘childhood’ but room to grow

Source: Xinhua | 2018-09-07

China’s fintech industry is still in its “childhood” and although there are challenges it also has a huge potential to grow with help from digital technologies like artificial intelligence and cloud, experts told the LendIt Fintech Conference yesterday in Shanghai.

Ye Daqing, CEO of New York-listed Jianpu.ai, a third-party online finance firm, said in an interview at the summit that cyber lending including P2P (peer-to-peer) platforms and online insurance are still in the “childhood” period.

“Generally speaking, fintech is developing at the level similar to the United States in the 1990s. We can call the stage as kindergarten or primary school with adolescent problems,” Ye said.

New technologies will act as a catalyst to help the industry to grow, and PwC said in a recent report that 77 percent of Chinese fintech firms will invest more on big data, mobile, AI and cloud within the next 12 months.

AI is set to take “center stage” in financial services, said Peter Rentons, LendIt’s co-founder.

Tencent said it will use AI and cloud to fight fraud and other challenges, said Hu Liming, general manager of Tencent Financial Cloud.