Digital transformation in money lending IN ASSOCIATION WITH
UNITED ASIA FINANCE LIMITED
DIGITAL REPORT 2020
Digital transformation in money lending 02
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UNITED ASIA FINANCE LIMITED
Akihiro Nagahara, Managing Director and CEO of consumer finance company United Asia Finance Limited, discusses the technologies maintaining the company’s position as Hong Kong’s largest money lender
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nited Asia Finance Limited (UA) is the biggest money lender in Hong Kong. Founded in 1993 by Managing Director
and CEO Akihiro Nagahara, who introduced the concept of unsecured personal loans into the Hong Kong market in 1977, earning Nagahara the nickname ‘Father of Personal Loan of Hong Kong’. UA is now the biggest consumer finance company in Hong Kong, with the largest variety of all-round personal loan products and the most comprehensive online and offline channels, including the most extensive branch network of a total 49 branches located at different locations throughout Hong Kong. Born in Taiwan, Nagahara joined a company after graduation in Tokyo in 1976. He initiated and helped to start up the consumer lending business
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“ UA is the first finance company in the market to introduce online personal loans, namely the ‘i-Money’ internet personal loan as early as the year 2000, at a time when even many other finance companies had not yet joined the market. In 2015, our mobile app ‘One Click to Loan’ was launched, further offering convenient and hassle-free loan experiences for customers”
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— Akihiro Nagahara, Managing Director & CEO, United Asia Finance
for his company in Japan which turned out to be very successful. Despite not speaking Cantonese at that time, in 1977, Nagahara was dispatched to venture to Hong Kong by his boss at the time, bringing the idea of the unsecured personal loan to the city. He was able to do so thanks to the deposit-taking companies ordinance instituted in 1976, allowing an overseas company with a minimum capital of HK$2.8mn to set up JCG Finance in Hong Kong. The personal loan business grew fast and successfully until being sold in 1990, at which time there were 30 branches. In 1993, with investment by Allied Group, Nagahara opened United Asia Finance Limited, with profits recorded from the very first year. In 2007, the company achieved the milestone of expanding to Mainland China, with the first branch opening at Shenzhen, thus becoming the first Hong Kong finance company to start a consumer finance business in the Mainland. Now, there are branches in 15 cities throughout Mainland China. Since 1996, ITOCHU has been a shareholder. In 2005, a majority stake in the
UA CLICK TO WATCH
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07 company was acquired by Sun Hung
up such department, again showing
Kai & Co. Limited from Allied Group.
its continuous promise and commit-
Having recently celebrated its 25th anniversary, the company is
ment to offer the best consumer loan services for customers.
gearing up to ward off the rise of
Lee’s role actually comprises
virtual banks, as CIO Aaron Lee
two complementary halves, as he
emphasises. “Keeping the business
explains. “My role is CIO at UA, yet I
model competitive with virtual banks
supervise different responsibilities
is the reason we have to be ready to
for the company. I oversee traditional
transform for the digital generation.”
IT functions and make sure the IT
A sentiment shared by Nagahara, the
operation runs harmoniously, while
Fintech and Innovation Department
simultaneously implementing digital
was officially set up in January
strategies to enhance the competi-
2019 by UA, being the first and only
tiveness of our business to keep our
finance company in the market to set
leading position in the industry.” w w w.ua f. com . h k
UNITED ASIA FINANCE LIMITED
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One of these strategies consists of
UA has to remain on top of the
a move towards an “open consumer
requirements of respective statutory
loan platform”, which in practice means
and regulatory government institutions
providing greater transparency to
of the industry, and the representa-
customers and improving the access
tive industry associations Licensed
of third party services via APIs. “We
Money Lenders Association. “One
have our API gateway to talk with our
example of the requirements is in cus-
external business partners. Our organi-
tomer information protection, because
sation’s architecture is based around
Hong Kong has very strong require-
Kubernetes, and we’re setting up a new
ments regarding the handling of such
generation of online app, web and legacy
information. Another is in anti-money
applications using the Pivotal Container
laundering. The money lenders’ regu-
Service as an integration platform.”
lator has very detailed Electronic
E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
Akihiro Nagahara
Mr Akihiro Nagahara is the Managing Director and CEO of United Asia Finance Limited, with over 40 years of experience in the consumer credit market in Japan and Hong Kong. Mr Nagahara introduced the idea of unsecured personal loans from Japan to Hong Kong in 1977. With his inf luence and contribution in the consumer finance industry in Hong Kong, the nickname of “Father of Personal Loans of Hong Kong” is given to Mr Nagahra. Mr Nagahara established the first personal finance company with scale in Hong Kong and is the Founding Chairman of the Hong Kong Licensed Money Lenders Association. Mr Nagahara is keen on servicing the community and very supportive of charities and has been the Director of Po Leung Kuk. Mr Nagahara holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law from National Taiwan University and a Master’s degree in Law from Japan Hitotsubashi University; he then completed a Doctoral degree at the same University. Mr Nagahara has been conferred Honorary Fellowship by The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2016, in recognition of his remarkable contributions to the University and the community. In 2012, Mr Nagahara was awarded “Person of the Year in the Chinese Microfinance Industry” by the China Microfinance Association; and in 2013, was awarded “CAPITAL Leaders of Excellence” by the Capital Magazine in recognition of his continued and outstanding contribution to the consumer lending industry in Hong Kong. w w w.ua f. com . h k
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“ We aim to keep our leading status as the most influential and largest money lender in Hong Kong” — Akihiro Nagahara, Managing Director & CEO, United Asia Finance
Know Your Customer (EKYC) due diligence procedures.” The EKYC requirement itself serves as an opportunity, as Lee explains. “In Hong Kong, we use the EKYC approval with a Hong Kong ID. As part of the licensing process, this Hong Kong ID card is associated with the likeness or image and then we can detect abnormalities or approve loans. We plan to launch the latest ‘Yes UA’ app in 2020 with the EKYC solution associated. We first launched the app in August, 2019, which was a huge success,
significantly increasing our digital
loan processing purely online.” Hong
business volume by 20%.”
Kong citizens will be able to use the
The philosophy underpinning the
app with their Hong Kong ID card,
success of the app is based around
even the newly-issued one for part
ease of use. “We would like to use
of the population, with its embed-
our online apps to enhance the ulti-
ded hologram.” says Lee. “The Hong
mate convenience of the customer
Kong ID card is the key and eases
experience, and put the structure of
the whole application process. You
E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
Aaron Lee Aaron Lee is responsible for formulating digital transformation services strategies and deploying fintech and DX solutions, including, but not limited, to digital and online, AI, Big Data, blockchain, cognitive and machine learning and robotic process automation, to transform UA’s capabilities in finance services innovations, strengthening the company’s market leading and drive business revenue. Since 1998, he has occupied senior regional management roles in firms such as Atos, Microsoft and Sybase, in which provided enterprise advisory consulting and business services to a portfolio of sizable clients within the Asia Pacific and Greater China regions. He is an expert in digital transformation, with more than 24 years of experience in IT strategic planning, project management and strategic partnership and alliance formation with first tier IT Solution providers. He graduated from the Said Business School of Oxford University and Staffordshire University.
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apply for the loan and then go through the application procedure to approval. Once that’s done you receive the money directly through the Faster Payment System, transferred to your account. Everything is done without annoyance to you.” The approval part of the process relies on data, and Lee is overseeing the transformation in both the format of data UA collects and how it is analysed. “We are going to build up a 360-degree view of customer 12
information.” Currently UA collects customer information for processing the loan, much of it from credit reference agency TransUnion. From this information, however, only the transaction data at the respective financial institution can be gleaned. “Traditionally we only get the loanrelated information. We grab your financial data, your address, your name and so on, and then you apply for a loan. Then we’ll collect your financial information and consolidate it with the rest. We would like to know our customers more by referencing data derived from online channels, and we’re considering it a multi
“We try to understand each customer that comes to us, their problems and needs, then our experienced staff will share professional advice with them regarding the options of the best loan solution plan to solve their problems” — Akihiro Nagahara, Managing Director & CEO, United Asia Finance
intelligence platform that we can use with our attribution customer data.” It’s a direction that Lee is hoping to further explore, collecting data from new and varied sources. “We would like to associate more of the social information with traditional customer information. Maybe we can understand our customer more from different aspects of their online behaviors like their online browsing. We would like to consolidate it together to build up that 360-degree view and offer the most suitable loan services for each single customer to best serve his financial needs.” The complexity of such a system has required the support of a number of expert partners. “Because we would like to acquire more data, we use an enterprise scale database as our traditional database. Our relationship with Oracle has lasted over ten years, which is why we choose them as our transactional database and data warehouse platform.” Owing to the volumes of data created, UA has also found it necessary to move to the cloud. “As we convert data into a big data platform, we’re moving it w w w.ua f. com . h k
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15 to big PaaS players. Again, the relationship is there. While Oracle is our traditional database platform, we’re extending it to an object database meaning we can move all of our reasoning and other 360 degree data into a single platform.” The transformation of its technology offerings is an ongoing process and is in service of retaining its prime position, as Lee emphasises. “We aim to keep our leading status as the most influential and largest money lender in Hong Kong by further enhancing our capability. w w w.ua f. com . h k
UNITED ASIA FINANCE LIMITED
This is our vision. The feedback we have received for our technology has been very positive so far,” reasserted by Akihiro Nagahara. Thanks to Akihiro Nagahara’s insight and understanding of the market with his rich experience, the innovative loan products UA has pioneered over the last 27 years will continue to serve it in good stead for the future, from debts consolidation loans to property owner’s loans to personal loans which can be pro16
cessed entirely over the phone. In 2000, UA pioneered the “i-Money Internet Personal Loan”, becoming
“ Keeping the business model competitive with virtual banks is the reason we have to be ready to transform for the digital generation” — Aaron Lee, CIO, United Asia Finance Limited
the first money lender to introduce online loan services in the market. The whole loan application, from approval to disbursement, could all be completed online without the need to show up in person. The service motto of UA is to always offer caring and personalised services for customers. “We try to understand each customer that comes to us, their problems and needs, then our experienced staff will share professional advice with
1993
Year founded
630+ Number of employees
them regarding the options of the
and loyal staff and company service
best loan solution plan to solve their
that puts the customer first, inspiring
problems, helping customers to let
the slogan: “Let go of your worries.
go of their worries and enjoy life
YES, UA!”
again,” says Nagahara. “This humanised and caring approach, together with the pace we keep up with technology and the outside world makes UA different and outstanding, with the support and recognition of the public and customers for more than a quarter of a century in Hong Kong.” Alongside this stand experienced w w w.ua f. com . h k
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UNITED ASIA FINANCE LIMITED 21/F ALLIED K A JIMA BUILDING 138 GLOUCESTER ROAD WANCHAI HONG KONG T +2681 8888
www.uaf.com.hk
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