TOKYO, Feb. 24, 2025 -- WeBank was honored with three prestigious awards at The Asian Banker's 2025 Banking Innovation Annual Meeting and Global Excellence in Retail Financial Services Awards Ceremony recently held in Tokyo, Japan. The accolades include "Best Digital Bank in Asia Pacific", "Best Digital Bank in China" and "Best AI/Gen AI Application in SME Marketing Initiative in Asia Pacific", recognizing WeBank's outstanding achievements in inclusive finance and innovative application of financial technology in MSME finance.
The Asian Banker Awards are among the most authoritative and influential in the global financial industry. WeBank's multiple international awards underscore the recognition among leading international institutions of its accomplishments in inclusive and digital finance practices.
At the ceremony, Fang Zhenyu, Vice President of WeBank, addressed, "In just ten years since our establishment, WeBank has served over 400 million customers, all made possible by the innovative business model and digital technology. The rapid development of cutting-edge technologies and the application of AI model tools are starting to make an impact across the industry. We believe this impact will lead to transformative breakthroughs in the financial industry and its models. At WeBank, we embrace collaboration with partners around the world to unleash the power of finance and technology. I believe we can strive to drive change together and create sustainable value for society."
Recognized for the Inclusive Finance Practice with Six Wins of "Best Digital Bank in Asia Pacific"
Since 2021, The Asian Banker has evaluated over 160 digital banks from 42 markets in five key areas: customer base, market/product coverage, profitability, asset and deposit growth, and funding. The annual "Global Top 100 Digital-only Banks Ranking" recognizes market leadership among digital banks, and has become a global benchmark for measuring the success of the industry, on local, regional, and global levels.
At the awards ceremony, WeBank was named "Best Digital Bank in Asia Pacific" and "Best Digital Bank in China" in the 2025 Global Top 100 Digital-only Banks ranking. This marks the sixth time WeBank received the "Best Digital Bank in Asia Pacific" award from The Asian Banker.
The Asian Banker noted that WeBank, with the largest customer base globally, has served a broad range of individual customers and MSMEs, with excellent profitability and operational efficiency. Leveraging AI, big data, cloud computing, and blockchain, WeBank provides scalable, secure, and efficient services.
WeBank remains committed to its technology-driven core strategy and continues to deepen its efforts in the research and development of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and blockchain. With over 4,000 patent applications and 38 open-source projects, WeBank has established a comprehensive technology capacity and embraces collaboration with global partners.
Since its establishment, WeBank has built its distributed core banking system, which is capable of supporting hundreds of millions of customers and high-concurrency transactions. This system has reduced the bank's annual IT O&M cost per account to below 0.3 USD, less than one-tenth of that of its domestic and international peers, with a peak daily transaction volume exceeding 1.4 billion. This has laid a solid foundation for the bank to practice inclusive finance and serving MSMEs.
WeBank has explored a sustainable approach of digital banking and contributes to the development of digital inclusive finance. WeBank has continuously enhanced its financial product offerings for the individual customers and MSMEs, such as "Weilidai", "Weiyedai" and WeBank Wealth+, actively optimizing fundamental financial services, including credit, wealth management, deposits, and account services. As of the end of June 2024, WeBank has served over 400 million individual customers and more than 5 million MSMEs have applied for loans.
Deepening AI Model Applications to Empower Intelligent Marketing
In The Asian Banker's "Global Excellence in Retail Finance Awards", WeBank is recognized as the "Best AI/Gen AI Application in SME Marketing Initiative in Asia Pacific" for 2025.
The Asian Banker stated, "By deploying hundreds of domain-trained generative AI models, the bank enables precise product recommendations, such as seasonal credit extensions tailored to business cycles, ensuring SMEs receive customized financial solutions. Beyond financing, the initiative enhances customer service through AI-powered platforms, significantly improving issue resolution rates and reducing turnaround time. This data-driven approach has resulted in a substantial increase in marketing, reinforcing the bank's leadership in SME-focused digital banking."
According to the Asian Banker, WeBank has demonstrated excellence in understanding and meeting evolving customer needs, customer journey and experience, as well as excellence in digitalization and application of AI and digital ecosystems that drive efficiency and engagement, embedding finance in the customer experience, outperforming regional and local peers.
WeBank has applied innovative achievements of generative AI technology to its inclusive finance business. As WeBank's MSME finance business rapidly develops, corporate customers are demanding higher levels of refinement, digitization, and intelligence in their operations. To address this, WeBank's MSME finance has developed a "Data + Generative AI" dual-driven approach to upgrade its intelligent marketing capabilities, improving MSME coverage, product matching accuracy, and customer satisfaction.
About WeBank
Launched 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 ranks No. 1 in The Asian Banker's Global Top 100 Digital Banks in 2025. By June 2024, WeBank has served over 400 million retail customers and 5 million MSMEs.
WeBank focuses on innovation and technology. WeBank has maintained its proportion of technical personnel above 50% since its establishment, while its research and development expenses have accounted for around 10% of its revenue. WeBank is now at the top of the industry in core technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, cloud computing and big data.
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