Given the financial sector’s impact across industries and consumers, banks should be leading the race to net zero. They can do so by offering green finance solutions, which encourage the development of green projects or minimise the impact on the climate of more regular projects. Additionally, they also need to green their operations to reduce their carbon footprint.
"For banks to provide financial services, they are actually a very large consumer of computing resources and computing power. So [as they] go digital, they need to consume a lot of digital resources and they need to consume a lot of data," says Jason Cao, CEO of Huawei’s Global Digital Finance Team, at today’s Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit 2022 media briefing in Singapore.
He adds: "Because we're a technology provider, we have to think from the perspective of technologies to resolve this issue, to help banks reduce their carbon emission. [This is why we will] use our technology to help banks to upgrade into a sustainable and autonomous infrastructure, which means this infrastructure will be quite different from what we used to have before. It will be much more saving on energy."
Jason Cao, CEO of Huawei’s Global Digital Finance Team, speaking at the Huawei Intelligent Finance Summit 2022 in Singapore on July 20, 2022. Photo; Huawei
He went on to share the three ways Huawei is helping banks in Asia Pacific do so. The first is pertaining to the power supply, wherein Huawei’s solutions can help banks use cleaner energy, such as solar energy, to power their operations.
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The second is on power consumption. In this aspect, Huawei’s offering can enable the heat emitted from the banks’ IT systems to be dispersed more efficiently so that less power is needed for cooling to ensure that the systems are running optimally.
Finally, Huawei is also helping banks optimise energy efficiency through its end-to-end performance management solution. Using AI, the solution can detect the peak and non-peak periods of a bank’s use of its servers, storage and other systems and optimise the energy needed accordingly.
“Low carbon is the ultimate goal of green finance. [Through our solutions, we have] helped a top bank in Singapore to deliver its green strategy. Our green power solution reduced its carbon emissions by 10%, while all-flash storage saved 50% of footprint and 70% of power consumption. With our AIOps solution, its operational efficiency is increased significantly too,” Ryan Ding, president of the Enterprise BG at Huawei, tells delegates at the same event.
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Helping OCBC with its digital and green agenda
Earlier today, OCBC Bank signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Huawei to accelerate its digital transformation efforts and grow its business in Southeast Asia and the Greater Bay Area more sustainably.
Eugene Lau, executive vice president, head of Group Technology Services & Technology Information Security Office of OCBC, and Howard Hao, managing director of Huawei Singapore Enterprise Business at the MoU signing in Singapore. Photo: Huawei
The partnership will focus on the following initiatives:
- Supporting green branches and buildings with smart IoT
Huawei will work with OCBC on the sustainable development of the bank’s operations to lower carbon emissions. This may include innovative solutions that integrate with smart IoT devices in the bank’s branches. - Strengthening OCBC’s leadership in data science and AI innovation
Huawei will offer its network of financial industry experts and best practices to support the bank, including extending its cooperation at global financial industry summits and forums. - Accelerating cloud adoption
The bank will work with Huawei to assess its cloud infrastructure as well as leverage advanced cloud-native and hybrid clouds to support the development of new financial services. These enhancements will simplify management and operations while ensuring business continuity and security, as well as optimise the structure of its cloud services investments.
