China Construction Bank opened a branch in Shanghai only using technology; they have no human staff and instead use facial recognition, artificial intelligence and virtual reality to provide services; this is the first of its kind in China and the bank says it can handle 90 percent of transactions. Source.
China Construction Bank is working with IBM to develop blockchain-enabled “bancassurance” platform for its retail and commercial banking arm in Hong Kong; A ‘bancassurance’ endeavor typically sees sales of insurance products through banks; the blockchain platform, which is expected to launch in Q3 2017, is currently in its testing phase between China Construction Bank (Asia) and its insurance providers and their clients. Source
To continue a global expansion of the bank they needed to remodel it around technology; they needed to transform to handle the customer base, which currently stands at over 660 million, more effectively; increasing bandwidth has been a main focus according to China Construction Bank’s CIO Jin Panshi, “We don’t just need bandwidth for 4K or HD video, but we also felt that AI capabilities, including voice and facial recognition, were urgently needed.”; they have also migrated about 83 percent of distributed applications to the cloud and continue to keep innovating to try and stay ahead. Source.
Considered part of the 'Big Four' banks in China, the China Construction Bank (CCB) is looking to launch a banking and insurance blockchain product; their hoping to use their new bancassurance product in Q3 to sell third-party insurance products on the distributed ledger as CoinDesk reports; they are using the IBM blockchain and have been testing the products for months. Source.