Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a transformative force in financial services for several years, profoundly reshaping how institutions operate. However, as digital adoption accelerates, the true value of AI—or its potential to add complexity—hinges critically on selecting the right partners for specialized applications. A McKinsey report highlights that while AI tools are widely available, most organizations have yet to deeply embed them into their workflows, thereby limiting their enterprise-level impact. The appropriate application of AI can revolutionize financial systems, turning them into agile, high-performance engines capable of responding with the instantaneous speed of digital-native platforms. Conversely, AI systems trained on flawed data and assumptions risk exacerbating existing problems, allowing inefficiencies to snowball into systemic risks rather than resolving them. This underscores that the fundamental challenge lies in the incentives driving AI development and the strategic partnerships that dictate its design, training, and deployment within financial systems.

It is precisely at this intersection that Huawei conceptualized and launched the Huawei RONGHAI Financial Partner Program. This initiative aims to bridge foundational infrastructure with specialized financial applications and has rapidly expanded to include over 150 partners globally. Roger Wang, Director of the Partner Development Department at Huawei Digital Finance BU, alongside Wizard He, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Netis Technologies, recently discussed with Fintech News Network’s Chief Editor, Vincent Fong, how the RONGHAI program facilitates the creation of AI-infused finance applications that are not only innovative but also stable and scalable in production environments.

Huawei is actively fostering an ecosystem that transcends traditional vendor-client relationships. Roger Wang emphasizes the creation of value through the "chemistry" among its partners. The RONGHAI program emerged from Huawei's recognition that even with substantial experience, a large company cannot achieve comprehensive digital transformation alone. Wang explained, "We came to realise that we need to build an ecosystem with a lot of excellent technology partners, so we can build end-to-end capabilities throughout the digital transformation journey that shortens the time and effort that our customers need to spend." This urgency is fueled by the rapid pace of change in financial services; banks can no longer afford years to modernize core systems, as customer behavior, competition, and business models evolve too quickly.

Through close collaboration between Huawei and its technology partners, transformation timelines have been dramatically compressed. Roger Wang cited an example in the Philippines where a complete banking transformation was achieved in less than 10 months. This success highlighted that core banking is merely one facet of digital transformation, inspiring Huawei to launch RONGHAI to attract competent partners and support customers in new, more efficient ways.

For Wizard He, an AI expert with over two decades of experience, the primary value of the RONGHAI program lies in its ability to deliver end-to-end solutions to banking customers. Netis, a partner in the program, specializes in providing comprehensive AI visibility for banks. Having collaborated with Huawei across numerous markets, Wizard He describes RONGHAI as an operational model that empowers banks to accelerate their pace of innovation without compromising stability. An early engagement under this model involved a leading Singaporean bank's "Gandalf" digital transformation initiative, which aimed to adopt the agility of digital-native tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Netflix within a regulated banking framework. In this endeavor, Netis and Huawei worked in tandem, with Huawei providing a stable technology foundation and Netis focusing on application-layer agility. Wizard He also highlighted Huawei's extensive global expansion network, which connects partners across continents, leveraging its role as an owner and member of RONGHAI.

Crucially, Wizard He underscored that the strength of the RONGHAI program stems from how specialized partners integrate as a cohesive system rather than operating in isolation. In core banking projects, for instance, Huawei collaborates with core banking vendors and software partners to simultaneously deliver transformation, agility, and resilience. Wizard He illustrated this with a "triangle" analogy: "Huawei has different product portfolios. They have ICT infrastructures, computing, storage network, Huawei cloud and the GPU. So if you work with Huawei, problems, especially related to technology, can be solved." Huawei’s dedicated partner management model further expedites this process, enabling partners to leverage diverse technologies, deploy solutions faster, and scale with confidence. Wizard He affirmed the benefits for Netis, stating, "We collaborated with Huawei and extended to five different continents, and shared our experience from one to many."

With over 150 companies now onboard, the RONGHAI ecosystem maintains an intentionally selective approach. Roger Wang explained that the primary consideration for selection is a partner's ability to contribute effectively to a coherent and high-performing ecosystem, fostering new, organic synergies. Ensuring quality and consistency at scale necessitates strict discipline, guiding entry into the program via three core criteria. First, partners must demonstrate creativity in technology, applications, and real-world use cases. Second, speed is crucial—the ability to rapidly evolve products based on specific customer needs. Third, platform readiness is paramount, requiring partners to efficiently deploy their applications on Huawei’s foundational infrastructure. By ensuring partners can swiftly land solutions and scale them across various markets, RONGHAI transforms a mere network of collaborators into a governed ecosystem fully capable of delivering enterprise-grade AI adoption at scale.