JPMorgan is racing with top-tier tech firms to roll out better mobile apps, virtual assistants, cybersecurity systems, and digital platforms. It spends $12 billion annually to fuel a team of 50,000 technologists. But being large and established can be a burden in industries swarming with nimble startups.
As a result, large companies are looking to acquire or build up the best-in-class technology to compete with them. That is especially true in financial services, where the big banks are racing with tech companies to build better software to make sending and receiving money easier.
One such company strategically invested in JPMorgan is Cleareye.ai, a financial technology provider focused on trade finance. The firm has developed a system that uses artificial intelligence to help automate and streamline many of the manual tasks associated with due diligence. The system can interpret and process images and documents, identify sanctions red flags, verify letters of credit, and use rules to support international regulatory frameworks. The system claims to increase Trade Finance Operations productivity by 70%, boost letter of credit document examination nine times, and reduce the end-to-end processing time by 80%.
The company demonstrated its technology at the Sibos financial conference in Amsterdam this week and is working on a pilot with DBS Bank, Singapore’s largest bank. In addition, the company has co-founded a platform called Partior with DBS and sovereign fund Temasek to facilitate multi-bank settlement on the blockchain in Singapore dollars and other currencies.
Jang and the rest of the Cleareye team are based in Singapore, which is essential to the company because Asia has a lot of demand for remittances from migrants who want to send money home to their families in markets like Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The company also has a presence in Hong Kong and Taiwan to cater to Asian customers.
