China is creating a broad-based platform for artificial intelligence-powers fintech to drive the country’s economic development, according to keynote speeches and panel discussions at Finnovasia, part of the Hong Kong Fintech Week focusing on the future of AI in finance. China has made significant headway in AI, based on advances in computer-processing power, algorithms and data collection used by academic researchers and major internet companies such as Baidu, Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings and JD.com.

In July, the Chinese government set goals to build a domestic AI industry worth nearly USD150 billion in the next few years, and to make China an “innovation center” in this field by 2030. “The U.S. has better scientists doing research in AI, but as to the union of AI and financial technology, China is leading and will continue to dominate in the future,” Chan Ka-keung, Adjunct Professor of Finance at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said during a panel discussion. Chan said China’s success was helped by consumers enthusiastically embracing new technology. Moreover, they are not reluctant to share relevant data with trusted service providers, such as those in online search, e-commerce and social media.

At the Finnovasia panel discussion, Ling Kong, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at online lending company Dianrong, pointed out that the company serves millions of customers every month, each bringing plenty of data sets that are used for making decisions. Chan also said the rapid growth of new fintech services, such as peer-to-peer lending marketplaces and online money market funds, was made possible by a lack of innovation by the country’s traditional banks in addressing the needs of not only the average consumer, but also many small and medium-sized enterprises.

High-flying start-up Ant Financial Services Group, which runs online payments service Alipay and money market fund Yu’ebao, has made AI a key driver for expanding its businesses and improving customer service. Donald Feagin, Senior Vice President of Global Business at Ant Financial, said in a keynote speech that the company’s customer service was “powered by AI technologies like natural language processing, machine learning and voice recognition”. “The possibilities are really endless – of what we can do here,” said Feagin, a former Senior Partner at Goldman Sachs. He added that AI – in particular, deep-learning technology – had helped to detect fraud and anticipate issues at Alipay, which has about 520 million users. “So our fraud loss today is less than one in 1 million,” said Feagin. “This is a fraction of the fraud losses of other global payments players.

“Right now, the AI market is dominated by all these big companies – the Googles, Facebooks and Apples of the world,” Eberhard Schoeneburg, Lead AI Adviser at global consulting firm PwC, said, adding that “the future of AI will be driven by start-ups, including early-stage companies that have never been heard of,” the South China Morning Post reports.