Shinhan Bank is pioneering the integration of a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) model into its internal systems, marking a significant shift in the South Korean financial sector's AI adoption strategy. The bank plans to deploy Alibaba Cloud's open-source Large Language Model (LLM), Qwen-3, into its internal AI coding assistant platform. This decision was driven by the model's open-source nature, which mitigates security concerns often associated with proprietary systems, along with verified performance metrics and superior cost-efficiency compared to prevalent U.S. big tech AI solutions.

The technical implementation involves Shinhan Bank commencing system development in July, with a pilot application slated for its internal development teams in the latter half of the year. Following rigorous performance verification, the system will be expanded company-wide. Financial IT specialist Bankware Global, known as South Korea's sole core banking platform provider and the local general distributor for Alibaba Cloud, is spearheading the platform's construction.

Qwen-3 is a robust LLM capable of processing over 100 distinct natural languages and programming languages. Its key technical strengths include exceptional performance in code search functionalities and high accuracy in cross-language search operations, making it particularly well-suited for advanced application development. This initiative represents the first instance of a Chinese AI model being adopted by a South Korean financial institution, a domain historically sensitive to security and reliability. The move is expected to re-evaluate conventional AI adoption preferences within the Korean financial industry, prompting a re-assessment of efficient open-source LLMs from China as viable alternatives based on empirical performance and economic factors. Bankware Global's dual role as a core banking software developer and an Alibaba Cloud service provider further underscores its strategic position in facilitating this technological transition.