Report on China’s computer vision industry

The story: South China Morning Post (SCMP) released its inaugural Computer Vision (CV) Report as part of its China AI Deep-Dive Series.

More about the report: The report provides insights, investment theses, and future market analysis of this surveillance-dependent sector and ambitions to discover new emerging applications of CV.

“Having survived the US-China technological rivalry in 2019, CV unicorns in China face major challenges with an increasingly saturated market for surveillance applications,” said John Artman, SCMP’s Technology Editor.

Summary of the report:

• Growth opportunities for CV include:

  • Security: As the overall penetration rate of CV remains low, CV companies are expanding their offerings to a wide range of security solutions.

  • Healthcare: Regulatory change has widened the market for medical imaging.

  • Autonomous vehicles: While fully self-driving cars have yet to be achieved, some players have managed to profit on existing technologies.

  • Finance: The insurance sector is emerging as a major user of object recognition technology.

  • Retail and marketing: CV is in great demand amid stalling sales growth and declining productivity. Major use cases include cashier-free shopping and store traffic analysis.

• Despite the previous high growth of its CV market, China has yet to take the lead in CV, currently lagging behind the US in key areas, including hardware, talent and patents.

• Privacy concerns over facial recognition are growing in China. Besides, China’s CV industry still needs to work on reducing its reliance on underlying algorithms from the US, convincing its best and brightest to develop their ideas at home, and overcoming its dependence on manually-labelled data.

4 Nordic fintech startups enter SEA

The story: Four Nordic fintech startups have been selected to join the UNDP and Copenhagen Fintech Impact Partnership Program to amplify the sustainable tie-up between Southeast Asia and the Nordic region.

More about the story: The four companies will be working together with the partners to rapidly identify and prototype potential commercial and sustainable partnerships in the region.

“The four startups have the potential to contribute to financial inclusion and the sustainable transformation of societies using tech solutions,” said Stine Kirstein Junge, Head of SDG Accelerator for SMEs, UNDP’s Nordic Office.

Meet the 4 startups:

Earthbank: Delivers enterprise carbon, green digital banking and ESG services to funnel billions into regeneration.

Agroclimatica: An agroclimatic platform that aids financial institutions in identifying and quantifying the risks and opportunities associated with agricultural credits, insurance and investments.

Normative: Simplifies sustainability by making the environmental and social cost of every purchase in our economy transparent.

Matter: Makes it easier for investors to understand and report the sustainability impact of investments through intuitive software solutions. Matter empowers investors to make their capital work for people and the planet.

MOU signed to progress insurtech and fintech in Singapore

The story: The Singapore FinTech Association (SFA) and the Life Insurance Association Singapore (LIA Singapore) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) earlier today, on the sidelines of the Singapore FinTech Festival 2020.

Also Read: How insurtech is changing the game in Southeast Asia

More about the story: Both parties will collaborate on the development of the life insurance and insurtech talent pool and expertise through mentorship programmes and deep-dive workshops. They will also join hands in establishing industry-specific reports, market research and whitepaper publications focussed on life insurance and insurtech.

Khor Hock Seng, President of LIA Singapore said, “The early digital transformation initiatives life insurers initiated years ago enabled us to service and stay connected with customers when circuit-breaker measures took effect in April 2020. Amid the pandemic, life insurers have accelerated their digitalisation efforts to future-proof their businesses; harnessing innovation to drive product innovation and optimise the end-to-end customer experience.”

—

Image Credit: Singapore FinTech Association

The post In Brief: Report on China’s computer vision industry; MOU signed to advance fintech and insurtech appeared first on e27.