As stated in a report by The People’s Daily on November 20th, a subsidiary of Ping An Insurance Group – Ping An Bank announced the intention to build up a boutique bank adopting blockchain, cloud services, as well as the Internet of Things (IoT). Ping An Insurance Group can be deemed as one of the prominent and leading corporations operating within the financial and insurance sectors.

A boutique bank can be defined as an investment bank providing non-full service, specializing in at least one operation of an investment bank, particularly corporate finance. Such kind of banks focus generally on individualized services and smaller deals.

Ping An Group will provide the recently-opened boutique bank with scientific and technical skills together with comprehensive financial capabilities, allowing the bank to serve financial services to businesses through a supply chain receivables service platform entitled “SAS”. Moreover, the transaction authenticity will be maintained by the SAS platform according to the article.

Regarding the report published by People’s Daily, Ping An Bank is going through the process of changing its business structure with the auspices of financial technology including artificial intelligence (AI), big data, blockchain, and cloud computing. These kinds of supportive technologies allow the bank to “ensure low-cost, efficient and personalized public services”

What is also mentioned in the article are the advantages of the aforementioned technologies comprising of “improving management and service levels and achieving comprehensive management marketing, risk controlling, wealth management, payment, operations, and financing.”

As stated in a report of Cointelegraph on November 14th, a strategic agreement between Ping An Insurance Group and the Sanya municipal government has been executed for the cooperation in constructing “Smart City”, applying “blockchain, […] biometrics, and other technologies,”

Back in the summer of 2018, Liechtenstein bank Union Bank AG unveiled its ambitions to become “the world’s first […] full-service blockchain investment bank together with the issuance of its own security tokens, reported by Cointelegraph on August 22nd”.