OneConnect Opens Its Joint Venture in Japan

OneConnect announced in Tokyo the official opening of SBI OneConnect Japan, a joint venture with Japanese financial service group SBI Holdings, providing cloud-based and AI technological services to regional banks in Japan to help them to achieve digital transformation.

"We have the world's leading technology!" said Ye Wangchun, Chairman and CEO of OneConnect. "OneConnect has proven its influence in the Chinese market. We help banks to improve their income, efficiency and quality of services, and reduce their risks and costs, we can help Japanese financial institutions to achieve the same goal."

OneConnect has been in overseas markets since 2018. In March 2018, OneConnect officially established its branch in Singapore, as headquarters and R & D center of Southeast Asia. It also opened a subsidiary in Indonesia in December 2018. Currently, OneConnect has operations in 10 countries and regions, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia and South Korea.

Ye Wangchun said: "In overseas markets, the main service targets of OneConnect are mainstream local banks and insurance companies. For example, in Europe, OneConnect signed a cooperation agreement with fintech ecosystem software provider Finleap to provide European market Fintech SaaS. In the Middle East, OneConnect set up a base in Abu Dhabi to build up financial technology ecosystem. In Asia, in addition to serving regional banks in Japan by joint venture, OneConnect also developed Cross-border blockchain trading network with Korean companies."

OneConnect's partner, SBI Group, is one of the world's largest integrated online finance groups and one of the largest VC/PE asset management institutions in Asia. Recently, SBI Group also bought equities of some Japanese regional banks. It is believed that the company is constructing an ambitious plan to create a technology-driven bank which will be the "fourth largest bank" in Japan.

The President of SBI Group Yoshitaka Kitao said the joint venture with OneConnect would "become the key to regional revitalization in Japan."