Bangkok--2 Oct--Mind PR
According to the national scheme called Digital Thailand 4.0 initiated by Thai government, the policy has drawn the importance of fundamental infrastructure as well as humanity which leads to attractive opportunity for Fintech in Thailand. The disruptive solutions in financial and banking industry started recently. TCC Technology and its partners including Thai Fintech Association and IDC Financial Insights, foresees the opportunity to encourage and push the first interactive forum called 'Fintech Dynamics in Asia'.
Ms. Waleeporn Sayasit- the Corporate Communications Director of TCC Technology keynoted to finance and technology professionals onto the key objectives in respects of providing Fintech updates in Asia that reflects readiness of technology for Fintech nationwide.
"We would like all of you to experience the Fintech dynamics in Asia at this forum. We planned this not just to learn from industry experts, but from each other. Everyone in this room is welcomed to share their experiences and ideas regarding Fintech," said Ms Waleeporn Sayasit, the corporate communications director at TCCtech in her welcome address.
A desire to do more and foster collaboration in Fintech in Thailand was what led to the creation of the forum, she explained, and TCCtech has plans to offer its cloud platform for the testing and developing of Fintech solutions. "Our ultimate objective is to co-create the solutions to benefit the Fintech community," said Waleeporn.
"This event is offered to members of the Thai Fintech Association, and I hope it gives you some insights into Fintech," said Mr Akradej Disayadej, managing director of the Thai Fintech Association. He directed interested parties to visit the organization's website at ThaiFintech.org. He said: "[The Association] is open to the public or those who are interested in Fintech."
Changing from rivals to partnership
There is no question that the momentum in Fintech is real and rapidly growing, says Araneta in his keynote, who noted how even regulators in the region are positioning themselves as hubs of innovation."There is [a doubling of] investments in financial technology, around accelerators, incubators and co-creators," he said.
Araneta has some practical advice for Fintech startups in Thailand: "This is the era where we have to collaborate, so don't be afraid of the big banks. Where they used to look at Fintech firms and think of them as [the] enemy… now it's all about opening up to this spirit of collaboration that is [now] very strong in our industry."
Citing statistics from 33 successful Fintech collaborations tracked by IDC Financial Insights, Araneta did note that the average time for a Fintech-bank collaboration to go from ideation to market is at least one year. This is a long time in startup terms, and was attributed to regulation and compliance.
"A majority (61%) of these 33 Fintech startups moved from idea to proof of conception (POC) in six months. Another 75% moved from POC to deployment after another 6 months," he said, though regulators are becoming more open. "[Regulators] are competing among themselves to be the most open and innovative. 2017 will hopefully be a year where a lot of regulators will relax their guidelines."
Explosive growth by Cloud Technology
There is a push not just for banks to work with Fintech startups, but to also work with others outside the financial services sphere as well. He said: "This is a great opportunity for banks to look at what they can contribute to this cross-industry collaboration. It could be a bank working with a retailer, a bank working with an airline and so on."
"To succeed, you will need to work with the TCCtechs of the world, or other information technology players. You need a [platform] for data acquisition, transportation, transformation, and storage. You need your analytics and dashboard to implement this, as well as security and access control," he said.
Reflecting from real experience
Mr Nares Laopannarai- the chief operating officer of Stockquadrant says he agrees on the crucial role that technology plays. "The key is to reduce the cost for fund management... an artificial intelligence (AI) system can help establish the trading strategy without the need for a human," he said.
On the other hand, Vorapon noted that PeerPower has been using a cloud-based infrastructure since its developmental phase. He said: "We were a new company, and putting together a company that is cloud-based was much easier. The cloud is a 'pay as you go' model. Once you can scope out and understand your requirements, you can budget for it."
He described the cloud as "kind of freaky" compared to his previous experiences where setting up technology necessitated having the budget to purchase hardware servers and networking hardware from a variety of vendors.
Vorapon said: "Now, you don't call them anymore. Set up time is a few hours, and booting up a new server is 90 to 120 seconds."
Another advantage that the cloud offers is for tasks that are compute-intensive. Speaking on the panel discussion, Dr Totrakool Khongsap, the deputy managing director of the Thai Beverage Logistics spoke about how graphics processing units (GPUs) can facilitate number crunching, sharing an anecdote of a server with over 200 processor cores taking over a week on a job that a GPU-equipped system completed in a day.
Vorapon has a similar story from PeerPower. "When my credit modeller was doing simulations and backtesting, what would take four to five hours on traditional CPUs probably took less than half an hour on GPUs," he said.
Ultimately, the frequency of such tasks is probably the deciding factor when it comes to deciding to use a GPU over a CPU. Most computations need to be run more than once, Totrakool said: "If you are doing some behavioural analytics or machine learning, can you wait two weeks and if doesn't work out, can you work another two weeks to run it again?"
"I think TCCtech understands the importance of this, and is exploring the possibility of offering GPU as a service," he said. For now, backtesting takes place once a month at PeerPower, though Vorapon acknowledges this may change in the future as his firm move towards real-time alternative data analysis.
Thailand's Leading Carrier-Neutral Data Center Provider
TCCtech currently operates not only highly secured multiple world-class Cloud-Enabled Data Centers in downtown Bangkok and the city's eastern suburbs, but also offers industrial and international data centers solutions via its Asia Data Center Alliance (ADCA) network in 5 countries.
Click here to find out more about how the T.C.C. Technology platform can support startups looking to gain a head start from the cloud, and enterprises looking to digitally transform their business.[link to www.tcc-technology.com]
Further detail relating to key success factors driving Fintech Industry, Limitations and challenges, including Top technology predictions, etc. Please visit here : {link to https://goo.gl/Aewmn1}