At Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2026 in Barcelona, Huawei convened a pivotal Digital Finance session to explore the next frontier of banking, moving beyond traditional digital channels, cloud migration, and mobile applications. The event, themed “Powering Resilient Intelligence, Co-creating Finance Future,” served as a platform for Huawei to unveil significant upgrades to its Banking AI and Foundation Model Solutions, aimed at propelling the financial industry into its next phase of transformation.

Alvin Feng, President of International Financial Business at Huawei’s Digital Finance division, delivered a keynote address that underscored the accelerating influence of artificial intelligence across banking operations. He emphasized that financial institutions are now re-evaluating the integration of technology into their long-term strategies. Feng highlighted that while the past two decades focused on digital optimization—introducing online banking, mobile services, and data platforms to enhance customer interaction and operational efficiency—AI now heralds a deeper, more pervasive transformation impacting every facet of banking.

“AI is becoming the defining force reshaping the global financial industry,” Feng stated, elaborating that intelligence is fundamentally altering aspects from customer engagement to risk management and internal decision-making processes. This shift marks another significant technological transition for banks, following earlier waves that automated back-office processes, digitized records, and expanded customer access through internet and mobile technologies.

The growing adoption of AI is prompting banks to reimagine service delivery and internal workflows. In customer interaction, the move is towards conversational interfaces that interpret everyday language, replacing traditional menus and structured forms. Personalization, once largely confined to high-value clients, is now democratized by AI systems that analyze vast datasets to deliver tailored insights and recommendations to a much broader customer base.

Internally, AI agents are transforming work patterns by assisting staff with tasks such as reviewing applications, analyzing documents, and identifying unusual transaction activity, complementing existing automated tools for data analysis. Feng articulated this as a multi-dimensional shift across customer interactions, human-machine collaboration, decision-making approaches, system architecture, and overall customer experience, signifying a transition from traditional to AI-driven banking.

A central theme of the session was the increasing proximity of technology to the core of business strategy. Historically viewed as mere infrastructure, technology, particularly with the rise of AI, is now recognized as a fundamental driver of growth and competitiveness. Feng noted that many institutions are striving to bridge the gap between business goals and technology deployment. To facilitate this, Huawei introduced the “Intelligent Finance Value Implementer” framework, designed to help financial institutions identify impactful AI scenarios, design robust enterprise architectures, and deploy intelligent systems aligned with long-term business priorities. Projects focusing on customer experience, risk control, and operational efficiency are typically prioritized for immediate impact, after which AI capabilities can be expanded across other services and departments. “Technology is no longer a support function. It is now a value center at the heart of the business,” Feng declared.

Real-world examples showcased the tangible applications of AI in banking. For credit card applications, AI-assisted systems can now perform initial document reviews in approximately twenty seconds, maintaining over 95 percent optical character recognition accuracy, a drastic improvement from the twenty minutes required for manual review. Conversational services, powered by natural language interfaces and specialized AI agents, allow customers to interact with digital assistants for tasks like checking balances or exploring investment options, with systems continuously learning user behavior for increasingly adaptive service experiences.

In small and medium enterprise (SME) lending, AI tools are emerging to streamline complex loan applications. Some banks are experimenting with AI agents that simulate different roles—supporting relationship managers, operations teams, and risk analysts during evaluation—thereby reducing information gathering and recommendation preparation time while maintaining human oversight. Huawei emphasized that the key to AI banking lies in using systems engineering to unify AI infrastructure with open ecosystems and reengineer banking processes through human and artificial intelligence collaboration.

Such advanced applications necessitate a robust technical foundation. Huawei addressed this by introducing several infrastructure upgrades: the SuperPoD computing platform, an AI data platform, and the Xinghe AI network architecture. These systems are designed to provide the high computing capacity and connectivity essential for demanding AI workloads in financial services, while meeting stringent requirements for reliability, security, and performance. Engineering optimizations were also highlighted, with Huawei reporting reductions in AI agent development cycles from months to weeks, alongside improved prompt accuracy and reduced end-to-end processing latency, crucial for integrating new technologies with established core banking systems.

Recognizing the inherent complexity of financial services, Huawei underscored the importance of collaboration through its RongHai partner program. This initiative fosters a network of over 150 solution partners and 11,000 consulting, sales, and service partners globally, facilitating joint development and deployment of tailored solutions that adhere to specific regulatory environments and leverage collective expertise. As Huawei’s digital finance business now supports thousands of financial institutions in over eighty countries, the MWC session affirmed that the industry is at a significant turning point, with AI expanding its reach into previously human-exclusive domains, continuously uncovering novel avenues for customer service, risk management, and operational efficiency.