Shanghai Commercial Bank lauded at Hong Kong Business Technology Excellence Awards 2025 for SME digital innovations

Its initiatives have enabled the bank to better meet clients’ financial needs and streamline its internal workflows.

Renowned local Chinese bank Shanghai Commercial Bank (Shacom) emerged as the winner of the API - Banking category at the highly sought-after Hong Kong Business Technology Excellence Awards 2025 for its success in delivering a seamless and personalised digital banking experience to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) with comprehensive services.

Amongst the revolutionary initiatives Shacom has made for SMEs are its online onboarding and loan application platforms that address their pain points, such as cumbersome and time-consuming processes. The platform streamlines account opening and loan applications, reducing processing time to 30 minutes. It also provides effortless onboarding with advanced eKYC solutions, leveraging biometric authentication and digital verification technologies.

These efforts have resulted in over 40% increase in new-to-bank corporate/SME customers.

Shacom has also pioneered cutting-edge solutions to address systemic industry challenges in SME financing. These solutions include the seamless integration with Hong Kong's key data infrastructure, enabling automated SME income verification and underwriting processes. They also feature an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven credit analysis platform, as well as alternative data integration and AI and machine learning automation.

Shacom has achieved significant operational efficiency gains as it streamlines its internal workflows. It has automated company search and digitalised compliance reporting flows, resulting in a 75% boost in operational efficiency and productivity. It has also seen an 80% reduction in underwriting process time to provide creditworthy businesses with the necessary funding to thrive.

At the same time, it has implemented an internal generative AI chatbot to instantly resolve frontline queries and free up staff to focus on high-value tasks and has digitised SME financing assessments to enable more efficient post-lending monitoring.

As it stays ahead of market shifts and responds rapidly to evolving customer needs, Shacom continues to design its systems to integrate alternative and internal data and lay the foundation for future use cases of advanced technologies.

“Our innovation and achievements have earned us a seat on the exclusive expert panel on digital trade financing, alongside a few leading banks in Hong Kong, where we are shaping the future of the SME banking industry,” the bank said.

Hong Kong Business Technology Excellence Awards honours outstanding companies and solutions that have made exceptional contributions in pursuit of technological innovation within Hong Kong’s dynamic tech landscape.

The Hong Kong Business Technology Excellence Awards is presented by Hong Kong Business Magazine. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2026 awards programme and be acclaimed for your company's outstanding contributions in pursuit of technological innovation, please contact Julie Anne Nuñez-Difuntorum at [email protected].