Korea’s Shinhan Financial Group said on Thursday it has agreed to expand business ties with Amazon, the U.S. leading e-commerce company, to apply Amazon`s latest automation technologies to banking services.

Shinhan already introduced voice-activated banking services based on Amazon’s artificial intelligence solution and is in talks to open new bank offices inspired by Amazon Go, a new convenience store that has no checkouts and uses a range of advanced technologies such as computer vision and deep learning to detect customers.

The company said its chairman Cho Yong-byoung discussed developing new financial services based on Amazon’s latest technology with Werner Vogels, Amazon`s Chief Technology Officer, and Frank Fallon, Vice President, Global Financial Services at Amazon Web Services during his visit to AWS Seoul Summit held at COEX in Seoul on Wednesday.

“There are many new business models to be created from the combination between finance and digital technology developed by global retail leaders like Amazon. We are committed to further expanding cooperation with Amazon to take Korea’s financial industry to a new level,” said Cho. Under the partnership with Amazon, the retail banking enterprise expects to upgrade its digital capabilities by delivering new financial products in connection with Amazon’s online commercial business, and realizing customer referrals backed by big data and AI, sophistication of digital marketing and the conversion of its group-wide IT legacy into the cloud.

Shinhan’s announcement comes after the two companies signed a strategic collaboration agreement in June last year and Cho visited Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle in October.

As part of steps to reinforce the bank’s digital capacity, Amazon provided an intensive training curriculum to some 160 Shinhan Bank employees in the areas of AI, blockchain, cloud and deep learning and held ‘Shinhan-Amazon Day’ on the sidelines of Shinhan Financial Group’s major customer interactive events to deliver lectures and hands-on booths in Korea.

In January when Shinhan Business Forum was held for all group employees, Amazon presented live demonstration of facial recognition and AI-based referral solutions.

By Kim Tae-sung and Minu Kim

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