(Yicai Global) July 27 -- Ping An Bank Co. [SHE:000001], a Chinese joint-stock commercial bank, is employing Big Data and artificial intelligence  to reform the retail banking business and remodel the processes of risk management, precision marketing, intelligent services and other areas.

"Fully optimizing customers' financial lives does not mean just updating functions or making technical progressions," said Zhang Shen, general manager of the lender's retail risk management department. "It is also the interconnection of all links along the banks' traditional business chain.

"The only way out for banks is to embrace Big Data and artificial intelligence to improve customer experience and efficiency and reduce costs," he added, saying it would help them "evolve into industry-leading fintech companies."

Ping An has invested a lot of manpower and material resources into these two sectors, Zhang said. In such areas as risk management and precision marketing, the bank has begun to integrate the applications of Big Data and AI with its retail businesses, and the effect on financial efficiency is already apparent.

The lender has also deployed about 40 risk model sets to carry out all-round monitoring and risk assessment, he added. Since it started to apply facial-recognition technology in mid-2015, Ping An hasn't found any cases of people impersonating applicants to take out credit cards.

Risk management is a major area for the application of Big Data and facial recognition and new technologies are being increasingly applied to precision marketing.