Chinese Firms Upend Traditional Financial Services With AI

Chinese companies are scaling up their financial services offerings by automating underwriting, lending, and creditworthiness assessments.

Ping An, China's largest private company by revenue, is using AI to expedite accident claim estimates and emotion recognition to determine whether loan applicants are lying, per Fortune. As of January, the insurer had loaned over $72 billion—and shrunk average approval times from five days to two hours—using the technology.

Heard of Jack Ma's MYbank? It's a small business-lending workhorse that's doled out $290 billion to mom-and-pop shops over four years. The craziest part, from Bloomberg: "The whole process takes three minutes and involves zero human bankers."

What's powering this?

China puts the capital B and D in Big Data, thanks to its 700 million-plus smartphone users, an economy with trillions of annual mobile payments, social credit scores, social media data, and less stringent privacy policies.

Zoom out: With super-apps like WeChat and global sensations like TikTok, China's tech industry is morphing from copycat to trailblazer. That includes innovations in the centuries-old industries of insurance and lending.