Deepening Technology Empowerment: Building a Banking Edge Computing Service System

Faced with the challenges of faster response times for financial services and increasing regulatory scrutiny in the industry, edge computing is becoming a key capability to support high-quality development of financial business in the new era, meeting the real-time business and privacy protection needs of the digital transformation of the financial industry.

1. Edge computing is a proactive choice for the digital management of branch operations.By utilizing edge intelligence for real-time analysis of people, objects, and events, it perceives the real-time dynamics of branch operations, coordinating personnel, smart terminals, and other service resources to actively provide services. This achieves a supply of digital service capabilities and refined management, gradually transforming the branch operation model into a data-driven service centered on the customer, enhancing the overall competitiveness and operational vitality of the branch.

2. Edge computing is a necessary means for the digital management of transaction risks.By integrating edge computing with video intelligent analysis and other technologies, it builds behavioral capabilities such as “perception, understanding, execution, linkage, and iteration” to effectively supervise the security compliance of key links in customer transactions or important areas of bank operations across all time domains, chains, and dimensions. It provides risk warnings and intervention for business transactions with potential risks, enhancing the risk control capabilities of business operations.

3. Edge computing is a core guarantee for the digitalization of customer services in banks.Edge computing can fully exploit the value of the massive unstructured data accumulated by banks, releasing vast data space and potential, enriching various personalized customer tags, and deeply portraying customer profiles from multiple perspectives. By combining customer transaction preferences, it innovates new financial product services suitable for users, providing a warm service experience and enhancing the bank’s customer service capabilities.

ICBC deepens its understanding of digital transformation, using the construction of an edge computing system as an opportunity to integrate digital technologies like artificial intelligence and big data from the cloud to the edge near customers, providing real-time responses and secure, reliable edge intelligent solutions, helping to expand the boundaries of banking financial services and innovate financial service models.

In recent years, ICBC has taken the lead in the industry to initiate the construction of edge computing systems and the planning of related financial innovation scenarios. A flexible, real-time, and unified edge-cloud collaboration system has been initially established, achieving resource and data collaboration across the cloud, edge, and terminals. The system possesses core capabilities such as edge node access management, full lifecycle management of edge applications, bidirectional communication of edge-cloud data, edge function computing, edge rule engines, and edge intelligent computing, promoting the rapid implementation of new financial service scenarios in banks.

1. Constructing a new type of edge computing infrastructure for “cloud training, edge inference”.It migrates the AI model inference capability from the cloud to offline edge scenarios, providing stable and reliable edge computing support for the vast amount of data generated during the intelligent transformation of bank operations. By building a unified platform for AI workstations across the cloud, edge, and terminals, based on data intelligent labeling technology, automated modeling technology, and model compression and transformation technology, combined with the characteristics of different vertical financial business fields, it accumulates general models for the field, continuously optimizing and creating professional domain model production lines, reducing the technical threshold for edge intelligent application development, and assisting ICBC in building large-scale edge intelligent models to meet the rapid replication and promotion needs of edge intelligent application scenarios in banks.

2. Creating integrated edge resource scheduling and management service capabilities.Based on the edge computing framework, it provides a standardized cloud-native operating environment, supporting various mainstream edge integrated machines and embedded intelligent devices through a containerized deployment model that shields the underlying hardware environment differences. It offers a flexible, scalable, and highly extensible edge resource pool, meeting the plug-and-play flexible service deployment model. Edge application development only needs to focus on business requirements without worrying about device operation and maintenance, deploying edge applications to designated business edge terminals with one click. As subsequent business scenarios continue to expand and enrich, dynamic expansion of edge computing power can be performed based on actual business needs, achieving rapid iteration of edge applications and supporting the quick customization and launch of innovative business scenarios for branches.

3. Deeply mining the value of unstructured data in banks.Edge computing promotes the integrated application of bank data, following the principle of nearby storage of low-value density source data and full exploration of high-value data in the cloud. It conducts preprocessing and intelligent analysis of massive unstructured data generated by branches, building intelligent monitoring and early warning capabilities for branch video. It assists in daily operational governance and decision-making of branches. Meanwhile, for user behavior information with high business value identified, it further integrates with cloud-based user transaction and other business data, enriching customer marketing profiles, accelerating the integration of multi-source data for branch customer marketing and performance evaluation, and facilitating the exploration of business innovation applications, achieving a closed loop from data to financial value realization.

1. Building a new model for intelligent service in branch operation management.ICBC empowers the digital transformation of branches with edge computing, creating an offline smart decision-making center to enhance the overall competitiveness of branches. By deploying cameras and edge computing devices within branches, it conducts local intelligent analysis of video monitoring data, strengthening operational management of branches and improving operational efficiency. First, it achieves customer flow statistics, trajectory analysis, dwell time analysis, and density heat analysis for customers arriving at the branch, helping the bank gain insights into customer flow, regional personnel entry and exit, and density congestion, assisting in business process optimization and rational adjustment of business area distribution, self-service device placement, and personnel allocation. Second, it implements intelligent supervision and inspection of branch staff service behaviors, replacing manual inspections of the operating environment and service processes, timely checking and supervising non-standard service behaviors such as customer operations and long vacancies, thereby improving customer experience and satisfaction. Third, as a smart device dispatch center for branches, it realizes the interconnection and coordination of smart service robots, smart screens, and intelligent self-service devices within branches, assisting lobby managers in providing customer service guidance based on the waiting situation of customers, proactively engaging in reception, guiding traffic, product promotion, and business promotion services, forming a collaborative service model centered around “people + intelligent service robots + self-service devices” to create a more technological, futuristic, and warm financial service experience.

2. Shaping new capabilities for compliance control in financial business operations.ICBC utilizes edge computing to provide intelligent dual-record quality inspection services, assisting in the regulatory compliance of branch business operations. It applies AI inference capabilities to marketing scenarios such as wealth management and insurance in branches, meeting the regulatory requirements of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) for the sales process of bank fund wealth management and insurance products. Based on standardized scripts and standard operating procedures, it comprehensively applies intelligent technologies such as speech recognition, semantic analysis, OCR recognition, target detection, and action sequence recognition to build intelligent dual-record quality inspection models, conducting on-site recording and video recording during personal marketing and counter product sales. It intelligently detects whether there are “misleading” statements or omissions of risk warnings during the marketing process, synchronously outputting quality analysis reports to determine whether the marketing process is compliant. This effectively addresses the pain points of complex dual-record compliance inspection processes, significant script differences, time-consuming and labor-intensive manual quality inspection, and lack of uniform standards, transforming post-inspection into real-time inspection, enhancing the timeliness of dual-record quality inspection and reducing the time spent on daily quality inspection work. It is estimated that after applying intelligent dual-record quality inspection, the average time for dual-record inspections at branches has been shortened by 70%, effectively assisting in the regulatory compliance of marketing dual-records and protecting customers’ legal rights and interests.

3. Creating a new system for collaborative customer service online and offline.ICBC strengthens offline touchpoint connection services based on edge computing, expanding multi-channel business touchpoints, breaking down barriers between online and offline channels, and creating collaborative capabilities that awaken offline through online and dispatch online through offline. On one hand, for complex offline business processing scenarios, it provides online support from remote business expert teams. Through innovative applications of digital media such as VR/AR glasses and holographic chambers supported by edge computing, the traditional voice or text interaction forms are replaced. The online support team can conduct “face-to-face” three-party video calls with customer managers and customers, providing “hands-on” guidance for business handling, meeting various banking transaction, advisory investment, and value-added service needs of customers in real-time, comprehensively, quickly, and professionally. On the other hand, for business needs received online that require offline collaboration, it collects and analyzes the service and busy levels of branch business through edge-cloud collaboration and big data technologies, awakening real-time collaborative processing offline. This achieves a two-way intertwining of information between online and offline channels, further improving the intelligence level of customer service and providing stronger support for expanding the depth and breadth of services.

In the future, ICBC will rely on the national information technology development strategy, uphold the core position of innovation, and adhere to technological self-reliance and self-improvement, empowering the digital and intelligent transformation of finance with edge computing, continuously improving the response speed of customer service, enhancing the operational management level of branches, deeply mining the value of unstructured data in branches, and comprehensively building a “Digital ICBC” to enhance the capabilities of digital inclusive finance services, better serving the real economy, and promoting high-quality economic and social development.