[Financial IT Forum] Hana Financial, Internalizing AI Core Technologies at 'Yunghap Technology Institute'

Establishing 'Hana Financial Convergence Technology Institute' to Focus on 5 Areas
Directly Creating and Supplying Financial Specialized Solutions
Ensuring Reliability is Also Important... "Banks Must Keep Public Interest in Mind"

Shin Gyu-jin, Head of the Cloud Division at Hana Bank, is giving a presentation on the topic "How Far Has Hana Bank's AI Come?" at the 13th Asia Economy Financial IT Forum held on the 24th at Lotte Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul. Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

[Asia Economy Reporter Minwoo Lee] Hana Financial Group's chosen artificial intelligence (AI) strategy is selection and concentration. Among various AI-related technologies, the group focuses intensively on researching and developing areas necessary for the financial sector to enhance the efficiency of various services.

On the 24th, at the ‘Asia Economy Financial IT Forum’ held at Lotte Hotel in Sogong-dong, Seoul, Joojin Shin, Head of Hana Bank's Cloud Division, emphasized, "AI covers a broad area and the technology is complex, so we do not handle all fields. Since we are not a technology company but have finance as our core business, we prioritize researching how to apply AI to benefit our financial core business and customers rather than pursuing AI comprehensively."

To this end, the Hana Financial Convergence Technology Institute was established in 2018. Among various AI fields, it conducts research in five areas: natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, data science, quantitative analysis (quant), and user experience (UX). Head Shin explained, "There was concern that efforts, experts, and services could be dispersed across each affiliate, so it was decided that an organization to consolidate research and provide services was necessary, leading to the launch of the Hana Financial Convergence Technology Institute. If research is needed by a specific affiliate or multiple affiliates within the group, researchers pool their expertise to select and carry out projects and then share the results."

Necessary data is collected internally in accordance with each affiliate’s data regulations. This is internalized into core technology and turned into solutions. Head Shin stated, "Our goal is to make these usable across various affiliates and fields, and eventually supply them externally as well. In the longer term, we are considering whether we can provide financial-specialized universal solutions."

Particularly, the focus is on financial specialization. For example, in the optical character recognition (OCR) field, although various solutions already exist, they have developed and are using solutions tailored specifically for finance. Head Shin introduced, "Hana Bank, specialized in the foreign exchange sector, handles many export-import documents that are complex, have different formats, and often poor print quality. Commercial OCR solutions focus on general use and do not pay much attention to resolution, so we developed our own solutions, released multiple versions, and obtained various software certifications for effective use."

AI has also been utilized for efficiency improvements. By applying AI machine learning (ML), they automated the processes of data collection, analysis, and operation into a platform. Head Shin explained, "Since we are not a technology company, we lacked many experts and needed to improve efficiency. Through this, we were able to quickly create various models."

As the active use of AI is expected to increase in the future, securing reliability is also emphasized as important. Head Shin projected, "Since banks have a strong public nature, AI-generated or applied products and services must be explainable and beneficial to both customers and employees. Moreover, securing social trust through systems that allow third-party verification will become even more important."