Backbase, the global enabler of Engagement Banking, announces the establishment of its first global Center of Excellence (COE) focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
The COE will serve as the development hub “for Backbase’s AI banking solutions worldwide and will be led byHead of AI Chris Shayan, a former CXO at Techcombank and HDBank.”
Backbase’s strategic decision to “establish this COE in Vietnam underscores its commitment to Asia.”
Vietnam is pegged as “the fastest growing digital economy in Southeast Asia and recognized for its rapid digital transformation, innovative spirit, and growing pool of talent.”
Asia is a core region for Backbase and Vietnam has “become one of the fastest growing markets in Asia, with key banks including Techcombank, TPBank, ABBANK, and OCB driving digital transformation through the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform.”
The Center of Excellence is strategically “located near Saigon Center in District 1, occupying an entire floor dedicated to advancing AI development.”
The COE will bring together a talented team “of engineers specializing in web, mobile, backend, AI, machine learning, and large language models (LLM), fostering rapid AI development and innovation.”
Chris Shayan, an industry veteran in AI and digital transformation, brings his vision and expertise to drive this initiative in Vietnam, where he has resided for more than a decade.
According to Shayan, the COE’s first product launch is “targeted within 6 months of its establishment, reflecting Backbase‘s confidence in a rapid development cycle.”
Shayan stated.
“Vietnam is a crucial part of our global strategy. Having managed an 800-person team, of which 99% were Vietnamese, I can personally attest to the remarkable potential of Vietnamese talent in technology and innovation. At this stage, our focus for the COE is to harness this talent pool to create world-leading AI capabilities that help banks solve business problems on a global scale, leveraging the wealth of knowledge and experience from Backbase’s portfolio of banks and tech experts.”
Before joining Backbase, Shayan led digital transformation initiatives “as Techcombank’s Chief Technology Officer, achieving benchmark-setting results in just 9 months.”
In addition, as the Chief Digital Officer at HD Bank, he led a transformation that saw 4x customer growth under his leadership.
Shayan added:
“The Center of Excellence will harness AI to deepen the value our customers can obtain from the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform, by increasing customer usage and servicing experience, as well as provide access to analytics for informed decision-making. The Center of Excellence aims to vertically integrate AI to uplift customer lifetime value and accelerate development and deployment of products for banks to have access to AI-driven features soon,”
A forecast by McKinsey predicts “that generative AI has the potential to create up to $340 billion in value for banks, while still in the nascent stages of AI development in the region.”
The CoE will prioritize practical AI applications “to enhance business outcomes, rather than focusing solely on R&D efforts.”
The goal is to create AI capabilities that “accelerate customer lifetime value and engagement, integrating these solutions seamlessly on top of Backbase’s existing architecture.”
