HONG KONG, May 26, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- On May 22, at the TAB Global Financial Technology Innovation Awards 2025 ceremony held by The Asian Banker ("TAB"), WeBank Technology Services and Fusion Bank were jointly awarded the Best Core Banking Technology Initiative (Small Bank) in Asia Pacific for their collaborated project of Next-Generation Core Banking System.

The TAB Global Financial Technology Innovation Awards is one of the most prestigious benchmarking awards for technology innovation leadership and performance in the global financial services industry. The Best Core Banking Technology Initiative specifically acknowledges institutions with exceptional technological advancement in core banking systems. This is the first time in three years that a Hong Kong digital bank won at the TAB Global Financial Technology Innovation Awards, indicating the technological leadership of the project's collaborative achievement.

The award-winning project was launched to enhance Fusion Bank's digital service capabilities and meet its business innovation and cost-efficiency needs to ensure the bank's sustainable development. The project covered upgrade of over 150 subsystems across five core business areas of Fusion Bank, and was completed with a swift cutover in just 15 hours. The data in legacy systems from various vendors were seamlessly migrated to the new core banking system within merely six hours. Supported by WeBank Technology Services with its core banking system solutions, the project has set a new benchmark in banking system upgrade for the banking industry in Hong Kong.

Leveraging the distributed architecture design from WeBank Technology Services, the upgraded system can now scale on demand according to business growth, solving the previous pain points of high upfront IT investment. Additionally, it further enhances the business agility and shortens the time-to-market for new product launches, through parameterized products, process orchestration, and AI-native capabilities. After the new system went live, the product development cycle of Fusion Bank was reduced from an average of six months to three months, with non-human IT costs expected to be cut by 53% by 2027. Notably, the new system is widely compatible with mainstream software and hardware, offering the advantages of openness and being technology-agnostic.

The Asian Banker highlighted: "WeBank Technology Services and Fusion Bank have demonstrated exceptional innovation through the successful execution of this technology initiative, effectively addressing current and future business needs while enhancing service capabilities. This has resulted in notable business outcomes, significant efficiency gains and enhanced customer value, surpassing industry peers." Billy Chiu, Chief Technology Officer of Fusion Bank, said: "We are truly honored to be the only Hong Kong digital bank receiving this award in the past three years. It is a significant recognition for both Fusion Bank and WeBank Technology Services. The upgrade of our next-generation core banking system shows our ongoing commitment to advancing financial inclusion through fintech, making our banking services more accessible and efficient for a broader segment of the community." As the wholly-owned fintech arm of WeBank, WeBank Technology Services leverages the parent company's leading practices in digital banking, focuses on providing digital finance and digital infrastructure solutions globally. Currently, WeBank Technology Services is expanding its partnership with multiple institutions across markets like Hong Kong SAR, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Qatar.

About WeBank Technology Services Launched in Hong Kong in June 2024, WeBank Technology Services sets out to leverage WeBank's cutting-edge fintech capabilities and digital finance best practice to deliver a variety of superior digital finance and digital infrastructure solutions to digital banks, financial institutions, government agencies, and industry partners worldwide.

About WeBank Established in 2014, WeBank Co., Ltd. ("WeBank") is the first digital bank in China. WeBank provides convenient financial services to micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and the public, and continuously improves the quality of services in response to customers' specific needs. WeBank has served over 420 million retail customers and 5.8 million enterprises.

WeBank has pioneered the development of the world's first fully distributed next-generation core banking system using standardized hardware and open-source software. It maintains an exceptional system availability of 99.999% with peak daily transaction exceeding 1.4 billion, while the annual IT O&M cost per account remains as low as USD 0.3, only one-tenth of the industry average.

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