Impact on the Thai and other stock markets was caused by fear of potential trade war between the world’s two largest economies, the US and China, said Soraphol Tulayasathien, director of Economic Stability Analysis Division at the Finance Ministry’s Fiscal Policy Office.

The two countries have threatened to apply higher tariff rates to an expanding list of products.

Soraphol said the Thai economy is resilient to impact of the volatile financial market. This is because the country has high international reserves worth US$212 billion (Bt6.9 trillion), equivalent to 3.6 times short-term foreign debts or 9.8 times monthly import values, he said on Wednesday.

Thailand has also diversified export markets, not only China and US.

Soraphol said export and tourism prospects looked promising.

He did not expect trade retaliation would escalate into the full-blown trade war and noted that some markets in Asia had recovered in today’s morning trade from yesterday’s sharp fall.

He expected the two sides would make a compromise.

The key advantages of fintech companies is that they can offer fast, easy, convenient and better user experiences.

Therefore, companies in the FSI sector needed to adapt themselves to respond to the rapid changes in both financial technology and the rise of fintech startups. The ways that FSI companies can cope with these challenges are either forming a partnership with these fintech companies or innovating internally through developing their own financial technology and implementing more automated and streamlined process to drive better business outcomes.

One of interesting technologies to enhance the tasks and process automation is Robotic Process Automation (RPA). What is RPA? RPA is simply a software solution that mimics a variety of rules-based, repeatable processes that do not require real-time judgement.

The benefits of RPA are to perform a task faster than a person can (operational efficiency), have high productivity with minimal error rate (accuracy), offer flexibility to work 24 hours (flexibility and scalability) and lower cost than a full time employee (cost effective).

Moreover, RPA can also perform simple to complex processes without interruption, and has been identified as one of the technology which could respond to workforce issues facing FSI, such as the shortage of high talent individual and retention of existing human capital in banking and securities.

It is clear that robots cannot replace highly talented human but they could help our valuable resource to focus on the important and critical tasks, and leave the robots do the repetitive or routine tasks.

To implement RPA successfully, the following steps can be used as guidance:

Justify cost: The first thing needed to consider when a company plans to implement RPA is to justify the feasibility of RPA investment. The common key components are software cost (including licence, assessment and implementation cost) and full time employee (FTE) value (representing how many full time employee you can be replaced by a robot). The successful implementation of RPA depends on the balance between the software cost and the full time employee (FTE) it replaced.

Find automation areas: The next step is to identify how RPA will improve the whole organisation. At this stage, the external consultants may require to help the company in reviewing the business process to identify the improvement opportunities. The focus is on finding areas where human have to do repetitive work where no thinking or judgmental is required.

Software selection: Currently, there are many RPA software in the market. However, there is no one software that is suitable for every automation scenario. To ensure the best RPA software selection, a company should consider the following factors: having trail version to use, availability of developed templates for deployment, training and support from the software vendor, and offering to do a Proof of Concept (POC) to have a clear picture before implementation.

Design automation workflow: At this stage, the company needs to design the automation workflow. To achieve this activities, the business owner and relevant stakeholders, eg risk management and internal audit, should be involved to ensure that automated operation will comply with industry standard and regulation, especially the highly regulated industry like FSI, resources are effectively utilised, benefit are realised and risks are mitigated.

RPA implementation and testing: This final stage is similar to other software implementation project so the companies can follow their own project management or software development approach. As RPA is a fairly new technology trend, Agile development is the recommended approach. It encourage programme to be developed and tested by user as soon as possible to ensure that users will be timely involved and get the result as expected despite of some differences from the original design.

In conclusion, RPA helps companies in the FSI sector to better perform business process transformation and to develop innovations. It offers the solution to perform tasks in a more effective way at lower operating cost as well as raising productivity and the level of accuracy.

Contributed by SOMKRIT KRISHNAMRA, partner, Risk Advisory Services, Deloitte Thailand

He said at a recent press conference there was a clear gap in financial knowledge.

“Now is the time for the industry to come together and support consumers with the necessary skills and information to manage their personal finances,” he said.

“Driven by the rapid growth of smartphone penetration in Myanmar, the cashless society is possible. The change is possible over the next three or four years. It is a really big opportunity. But, this will not happen unless we educate the people.”

Earlier last week, the firm launched a report on Myanmar people’s perceptions, attitudes and behaviours towards financial payments. In addition to quantitative data collection of 1,044 people in five cities-Yangon, Mandalay, Taunggyi, Pathein and Magwe, the study also included in-depth interviews to delve deeper into the attitudes of distinct consumer segments. The study was done in the second half of last year.

Citing the findings of its comprehensive study, Planell said only 36 per cent of Myanmar people are easy to understand banking products and services.

According to Planell, the nation’s economic trajectory has been on an accelerated rise – with no slowing down in sight.

“To cope with the new speed of development, it falls upon the banking and finance industry, in conjunction with Myanmar authorities, to educate people on how best to manage their personal finances and how they might benefit from increased digitalisation of payments,” he said.

He believes moving from cash to digital payments will provide enormous advantages to the people of Myanmar, as electronic payments added 55 billion kyats to Myanmar’s economy from 2011 to 2015.

“We do believe that electronic payments provide more reliable and more convenient way to pay for various services. Real tangible benefits driving economic growth include increasing transparency, helping the government get more tax revenues, and financial inclusion,” he said.

“People need to understand the opportunities brought by modern banking and digital payments. I am confident providing Myanmar people with financial knowledge will improve lives and grow the national economy.”

According to the findings of its recent study, what is most shocking to Planell is a significant rise in Myanmar people’s trust in banks and financial institutions.

“This is the most surprising to us. Until the past few years, people did not trust in banks very much because some people had lost their money in the previous credit crisis in 2003. Now we have found out that the majority of the people see banks as a safe place to store their wealth,” he said.

To him, motivations for opening new bank accounts include earning interest on their money, easier access to their money with a bank account and an ATM (automated teller machine) card, and keeping up with times, driven by a feeling that everyone has an account nowadays.

“Good news for the industry is that 49 per cent of the respondents intend to get a bank account within the next 12 months,” he said. The study shows that 38 per cent of urban adults have a bank account.

While the majority now sees banks as safe, trustworthy and transparent, 36 per cent of the respondents still do not see the need for banks in their daily life. Three in five people surveyed said that they expect their financial situation to be better a year from now than it is today. A further 69 per cent agreed that the next generation would be better off financially than the current generation.

Planell however admitted cash remained as the most commonly-used form of payment in Myanmar.

“Being over-reliant on cash for a very long time and without option to use other payment methods, most people still believe cash is superior to cards and mobile payments,” he said.

To him, the most used financial service is the most basic one- remittance services to send or receive money. Only 14 per cent of the respondents have ever shopped online and their frequency of shopping is low.

“Today there are high levels of understanding of traditional financial tools, such as remittances, gold and land investments, but there is real need for more knowledge around topics such as bank accounts, electronic payments or insurance – half of urban consumers are not yet aware of credit cards or insurance,” he said.

The ability to make bill payments, split bills between friends, get instant notifications and receive awards and privileges will trigger consumers to switch to mobile payments, he said.

Overall, attacks by cyber criminals are set to cost organisations in the Asia Pacific US$1.75 trillion in economic losses – more than 7 per cent of the region’s GDP, says the study conducted by Frost & Sullivan and Microsoft.

The study, “Understanding the Cyber Security Threat Landscape in Asia Pacific: Securing the Modern Enterprise in a Digital World”, involved a survey of 1,300 business and IT decision makers ranging from mid-size to large organisations – identified as having more than 500 employees.

The study pointed out that in. 2017, large organisations in Thailand incurred an average loss of US$12.7 million from security attacks, including in $700,000 of direct losses and US$6.7 million in indirect losses. Also, they suffered an average of US$5.3 million in what the study called induced losses.

A large organisation in the Asia Pacific region could possibly incur an economic loss of as much as US$30 million, the study found.

Cyber security attacks have led to job losses in Thailand and in Asia Pacific, with almost 60 per cent and 67 per cent of organisations, respectively, being forced to shed jobs over the past last year due to this problem.

Nattachai Charusilawong, consultant for mobility practice at Frost & Sullivan, said the total economic losses consist of direct losses, including revenue, productivity, fines, lawsuits, and remediation; indirect losses, including customer churn, reputation, and job loss; and induced losses, including consumer and enterprise spending.

“The direct losses from cyber security are the most visible, but are just only the tip of the iceberg,” said Nattachai.

Organisations in Thailand have encountered cyber security incidents included online brand impersonation, data exfiltration, and data corruption, which are the three biggest concerns and have the highest impact with the slowest recovery time.

Ome Sivadith, national technology officer at Microsoft Thailand, said that that there are three threat trends – botnets, which affect millions; hackers, which go for easy targets; and ransomware, which will grow as a problem. These threats delay digital transformation plans.

He said that the five cyber security recommendations for securing the modern enterprise included cyber security as a digital transformation enabler; investment to strengthen fundamentals; the maximisation of skill and tools with the best of integration of suite tools; continuous assessment, review and compliance; and the leveraging of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to increase capacity and capability.

Microsoft injects US$1 billion a year in cyber security investment in three areas: platforms, intelligence and partners. Intelligence is the most important area for Microsoft, Ome said.

“The Microsoft intelligent security graph provides unique insights and is informed by trillions of signals, such as those from 400 billion emails analysed, 1.2 billion devices scanned each month, 930 million threats detected on devices every month, and so on,” Ome said. “These are constantly monitored by Microsoft’s AI-based security capability solutions.”

He said that AI is becoming a potent opponent weapon against cyber attacks as it can detect and act on threat visitors based on data insights. However, AI is one of many cyber security practices, “and organisations need to consider people, process, and technology”.

Organisations in Thailand and elsewhere in the Asia Pacific are increasingly leveraging AI to enhance their cyber security strategy. The study reveals that 75 per cent of organisations in the Asia Pacific and 84 per cent of those in Thailand have either adopted or are looking to adopt an AI approach towards boosting cyber security.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will not lead to a debt crisis for countries that borrow money from China to finance infrastructure projects, Li Jiming, director-general at Foreign Affairs Office of Yunnan province of China, said.

He was speaking at a press conference in Yunnan on Friday.

Reacting to criticism that the BRI may become a debt trap for many countries such as Pakistan and Myanmar, which borrow money from China to finance road or rail projects connecting China with neighbouring countries and countries along the Belt and Road route, Li said China’s loans to other governments carry very low interฌest rates so they would not put high pressure on the economy of those countries.

While China’s loans to private companies may carry higher interฌest rates, projects are carefully screened via feasibility studies, he assured.

“The debt crisis is unlikely to happen,” he said through a translator.

He also assured that China would not interfere in the sovereignty of countries or dominate the region via Belt and Road projects.

The deepening cooperation between China and other countries is aimed at creating mutual benefits and sharing prosperity, he stated.

Yunnan on June 14 hosted the first-ever China-South Asia Forum in parallel with the 5th China-South Asia Expo and the 25th China Kunming Import & Export Fair. Yunnan province has been actively promoting trade and investment with South Asia and Southeast Asia.

The first China-South Asia Cooperation Forum (CSACF) concluded on Friday with participants promising closer cooperation in key areas including inter-connectivity, business, local government, poverty reduction and alleviation, finance and people-to-people exchanges, he said.

Senior officials from South Asian countries Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Southeast Asian countries like Myanmar and Vietnam attended the two-day CSACF meeting held on the Yunnan’s Fuxian Lake side. The parties agreed that the CSACF would be held annually for policy dialogue, he said.

Li said that the parties also agreed to create a CSACF Secretariat in Yunnan to better serve the development of the forum.

“The forum is a new platform for serving the high-level policy dialogues between the government of China and South Asian countries,” said Li.

He explained that China had many forums and each served a specific region and priorities. For example, China has a mechanism for facilitating closer cooperation with African countries and the European Union.

All mechanisms are built upon the BRI, as China has committed to opening up for trade and investment, he said.

Businesses from 80 countries are participating at the expo event at Dianchi International Convention and Exhibition Centre in Kunming, which ends on June 20.

Pichaya Siewkornburee, the owner of By Heart Cosmetics brand from Thailand, said she had received good feedback from Chinese consumers for her cosmetics herbal products. She is among 147 Thai businesses that showed and sold their products at the event.

In a related development, Yunnan authorities on Thursday announced the setting up of an international commercial arbitration service centre in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, for dispute settlement purposes which aims to smoothly facilitate trade and investment with other countries.