On 20th July 2022, our visionary CEO, See Wai Hun was invited by LeadWomen to shed light on blockchain and how leaders can leverage this technology for their businesses. LeadWomen is an organisation that elevates women leaders through meaningful connection, leadership development, and advocacy.  

Blockchain has gained huge momentum as the world progresses towards Web 3.0. But most people are still confused about the terminology, often using the terms ‘blockchain’ and ‘Bitcoin’ interchangeably. What they do not know is that blockchain is more than just a technology that powers the existence of bitcoin.

“If you do not fully understand the concept, chances are, you may be missing out on immense business opportunities that this technology can offer.” – See Wai Hun

In simple terms, blockchain is a distributed, write-only ledger that records transactions between participants. The two types of common blockchain options are the public blockchain (permissionless blockchain) and the private blockchain (permissioned blockchain). 

Figure 1: Two types of blockchain technology

Here’s the million-dollar question; should businesses invest in blockchain?

To which Wai Hun answered, “Before you start thinking of investing, you need to really understand it and what it can do for your business first.”

Blockchain brings a lot of benefits to an organisation, enhancing security is at the top of the list.. This is because blockchain stores information across a network of computers rather than a single server, making it difficult for hackers to view data. It also makes it nearly impossible to alter the records, thus preventing fraud and unauthorised activity. Besides that, Wai Hun also shared that blockchain technology enables greater transparency and traceability. For instance, all network participants with permissioned access will be able to see the same information at the same time, providing full transparency. 

However, there are also certain risks associated with blockchain. One of the biggest concerns when it comes to implementing the technology is its sluggish transaction speed. Bitcoin, the world’s leading cryptocurrency that is riding on blockchain technology, recently struggled with over 165,000 unconfirmed transactions. In addition, some of its users have to wait for two full days to get just one network confirmation!

Now that you know the pros and cons of blockchain, should you implement blockchain for your organisation? Below is a decision path by Hyperledger that will help your organisation decide if now is the right time for your business to implement this technology.

Figure 2: Blockchain decision path. Source: Hyperledger

Throughout the talk, Wai Hun shared a few use cases of how blockchain is used in various industries, one of them is the use ofbeing using smart contracts in blockchain to improve business operations. For example, using smart contracts in crop insurance for farmers. Smart contracts are able to utilise the decentralised oracle networks (DONs) to arrive at a consensus about weather events through many different data sources and trigger automatic payouts when the conditions of a policy are met.

So, where is blockchain heading?

The short answer: Blockchain is here to stay. According to Wai Hun, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted executive leaders to accelerate digital business activities, and this is propelling a renewed focus on blockchain and growth opportunities afforded by a more programmable economy. 

Figure 3: Hype Cycle for Digital Business Capabilities, 2021. Source: Gartner

In a Nutshell,

Keeping up with technology’s rapid evolution can be challenging, but it is also important that businesses stay up-to-date with emerging technologies like blockchain. This is so that businesses will be able to take advantage of and integrate these developments at the opportune time. Just because you don’t understand the technology, does not mean that it is not coming.

“Embrace the technology to explore strategic business initiatives, but avoid falling for the hype.” – See Wai Hun

The event ended with a fruitful Q&A session, followed by a warm appreciation and gratitude to Wai Hun for imparting invaluable knowledge to the audience.

About JurisTech

JurisTech (Juris Technologies) is a leading Malaysian-based fintech company, specialising in enterprise-class software solutions for banks, financial institutions, and telecommunications companies in Malaysia, Southeast Asia, and beyond.

The post “Blockchain for Businesses: What You Should Know,” by CEO See Wai Hun appeared first on JurisTech.

Watch the webinar session here.

Latest and future digital banking trends

Moderator Eileen Tan, Associate Director at Affin Hwang Investment Bank, opened up the session by asking what is the latest trends in digital banking for today and future trends five years down the road? Referring to Gartner’s hype cycle for digital banking transformation 2021, Wai Hun zoomed in on banking APIs and how open banking is the new strategy. We can see more non-finance players want to provide banking services and APIs allow them to connect to banks. She spoke about banking API aggregators that provide APIs that connect to multiple banks, simplifying banking integration for application developers, and API developer portals in banking that provide the capacity to document, configure and manage usage of APIs for application-to-application communications. Looking at future trends, Wai Hun brought to attention the blockchain technology and how blockchain is powering NFTs (Non-fungible tokens), and CBDC (central bank digital currency) to disrupt the banking industry.

Banking and the metaverse

Speaking about the future of banking, we can’t help but ask about banking and the metaverse. With the metaverse so prevalent in the next generation, is banking even possible in the metaverse? How far are we from it or is it just a far-fetch dream? 

“Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley estimate that the metaverse economy could be worth as much as $8 trillion.” – Goldman Sachs’ analyst Eric Sheridan from the exchanges at Goldman Sachs episode titled “Understanding the metaverse and web 3.0”.

There are many aspects of the metaverse that are stringing banks and financial institutions to explore the possibility of building a more unified, immersive banking experience. The metaverse is a seamless convergence of our physical and digital lives, creating a unified, virtual community where we can work, play, relax, transact and socialise. 

Source: Opportunities in the metaverse by JP Morgan, 2022

According to Wai Hun, we are not far from banks providing financial services in the metaverse. The reason is that we are moving toward a cashless society using e-money. People trust banks. If they need to check their money, all they need to do is to log in to their bank apps. Yet, what happens if we don’t need to put our trust in a bank anymore? Instead, we can opt to build zero trust with blockchain as blockchain provides full transparency, immutability, governance, and no censorship. Zero Trust is a strategic approach to cybersecurity that secures an organisation by eliminating implicit trust and continuously validating every stage of digital interaction. Expounding further on each point, blockchain establishes trust and transparency in which anyone can join the network and, as a result, view all information on that network. Blockchain also provides immutability for instance if we send money to another person, nobody can change it. It will remain unaltered and indelible. As for governance, blockchain has a shared community where a group of people come together without a central leader or company dictating any of the decisions where it handles all the governance issues. This is called a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO). DAO runs on a blockchain protocol fully and autonomously in accordance with rules encoded via smart contracts (digital one-of-one agreements). For censorship, Wai Hun gave an interesting example of the ongoing trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. According to Bounding into Comics, Twitter (owned by Elon Musk who was in a relationship with Amber Heard) has banned Johnny Depp from Twitter. But with blockchain technology, it has the ability to defy censorship.

“We are now technologically ready as blockchain is already here.” – See Wai Hun

What can banks do to keep up or be ahead of the curve?

The elements of a new digital age are converging at scale and without a doubt, the banking space is disrupted and transforming. How can incumbent banks keep up with the latest technology and what can be further improved?

Wai Hun mentioned that the problem is not the tech but the culture. “How do I promote innovation in my organisation?” Quoting Gartner, Wai Hun spoke about implementing the Bimodal to promote innovation in organisations. The Bimodal is the practice of managing two separate but coherent styles of culture: one focused on stability and business as usual (BAU); the other on agility and innovation. However, many banks forget that these two modes carry different metrics and they should be rewarded accordingly.

Wai Hun then wraps it up by putting up four things for banks to consider.

1. Be willing to experiment.
2. Have validated learning.
3. Are you creating value or wasting time?
4. Should you persevere or pivot?

If you are interested in enabling digital transformation in your organisation, hit us up at contact@juristech.net.

About JurisTech

JurisTech (Juris Technologies) is a leading Malaysian-based fintech company, specialising in enterprise-class software solutions for banks, financial institutions, and telecommunications companies in Malaysia, Southeast Asia, and beyond.

As one of the Fintech pioneers in Malaysia, we want to enable financial inclusion for the financial industry with our diverse range of solutions. Check out our latest AI-powered technology Juris Mindcraft, which helps banks and financial institutions to transform their digital landscape; and our end-to-end digital banking platform, Juris Spectrum which covers everything from digital engagement to lending and deposits, to digital collections, and artificial intelligence.

The post Digital Banking: Disruptions and Transformations appeared first on JurisTech.

What came first: the chicken or the egg? The same problem is also applicable to credit.  This is because if you do not have a credit history, it is almost impossible to get access to credit. Then you might ask yourself, how does one become eligible to get access to credit and financial products without a credit history? This question has challenged the world of finance for years and hindered a majority of credit products from becoming accessible to the underbanked population.

The traditional way to determine someone’s creditworthiness is often by evaluating their credit history. This method is simply not a viable option for the underbanked. Therefore, there is a need for different data sources, such as behavioural attributes, to fuel the AI-powered alternative credit scoring model. This model would rely on factors that are available for everyone and are easily traceable, with the data coming from social media, smartphone application data, monthly utility bills, etc. In time, this approach will turn the underbanked client profiles from thin to thick, and eventually converting them into becoming regular clients with financial institutions.

However, the ability to build a comprehensive portrait based on alternative data requires access to sensitive personal data. In the current dominant user-data ownership model, the data rights are transferred through the service agreements to the service provider collecting the data, which raises multiple data privacy concerns.

To address data ownership and privacy problem, we need to create a  different data governance model that can protect user data rights. This is where blockchain plays a part. One use-case of blockchain is to restore control over the user’s data to the user, simultaneously empowering them to a refined data literacy knowledge. This would enable them to determine how their data is being used, the purposes of the usage, and the accessibility to their data.

In conclusion, AI-powered alternative credit scoring is fast becoming the solution for financial inclusion, with blockchain providing assistance to address data privacy and ownership concerns. When combined, these two technologies have the power to shape the future of finance and make access to credit widely accessible for not just the underbanked population, but also a wider hit on multiple groups of target audiences.

Interested to know more on how to transform your businesses using AI-powered tools? Reach out to us to know more about Juris Mindcraft and Juris Score at contact@juristech.net.

About JurisTech

JurisTech is a leading Malaysian-based fintech company, specialising in enterprise-class software solutions for banks, financial institutions, and telecommunications companies in Malaysia, Southeast Asia, and beyond.

Juris Mindcraft: Effortless AI for Intelligent Business Decisions

Juris Mindcraft uses advanced machine learning techniques to learn from historical data and recognise patterns to build powerful predictive and prescriptive AI models. Taking into account non-traditional data sources. Juris Mindcraft has adapted its scoring model to target the unbanked. A great solution for alternative credit scoring to assess customer’s creditworthiness more accurately.

Juris Score

JurisTech’s very own financial scoring software solution that can assess customers’s creditworthiness, and provide recommendations based on results. Read more here.

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