One Year of Innovation: How the Backbase AI Center in Vietnam is Redefining Banking’s Future
It’s remarkable how quickly a bold vision can become a tangible reality. Just one year ago, we officially launched the Backbase AI Center here in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City. Our mission was ambitious: to build a world-class hub that would harness the power of artificial intelligence to solve the most complex challenges in banking. Today, on our first anniversary, I couldn’t be prouder to reflect on our journey, celebrate our key achievements, and share our vision for what’s next. This center isn’t just a satellite office; it is a core pillar of Backbase’s global innovation strategy, shaping the very future of how banks engage with their customers.
Why Vietnam?
The decision to establish our AI nerve center in Ho Chi Minh City was strategic and deliberate. For our banking partners and stakeholders, Vietnam presents a compelling combination of a favorable business environment, strong government support for technology, and a vantage point within one of the most dynamic digital economies in the world.
But for a technologist like me, the real story is the people. Vietnam has an exceptional pool of engineering talent, a vibrant and collaborative tech community, and an unstoppable ambition that defines the local ecosystem. We didn’t just come here to build software; we came here to build a team that could redefine what’s possible, and the talent in this country has exceeded every expectation.
The Achievements: From Vision to Value
Modern banks face a trio of persistent challenges: digital experiences that feel impersonal, operational bottlenecks that slow down growth, and siloed data that prevents a true 360-degree view of the customer. Our work over the past year has been laser-focused on solving these exact problems, turning abstract AI concepts into concrete business outcomes.
Here are a few flagship projects that demonstrate the tangible impact our team is delivering:
Conversational Banking
As we look ahead, our goal is to make banking completely frictionless, embedding it into the natural interfaces we use every day. We call this Conversational Banking. It’s about creating a bank that not only listens but truly understands. To make this tangible, I’ll be sharing a demo of two powerful use cases.
First, we’ll explore conversational data analysis. We’ll show you a user having a natural conversation with our LLM to instantly visualize their complete financial history with a specific beneficiary, turning rows of data into immediate, actionable insight.
Next, we’ll demonstrate the ultimate convenience: using a native voice assistant like Siri to interact with our LLM and effortlessly open a new Term Deposit. This isn’t just a query; it’s a complex action completed through simple conversation.
Holistic Advice & Coach
The old approach to PFM felt boring and often missed the mark on true user empathy — static data rarely inspires action. At Backbase, we’re changing that. Imagine an AI coach, or even a web of coaches (financial, career, property, etc.), proactively guiding your journey, truly empathizing with your needs. See how we’re making this a reality! Check out a quick demo of our Financial Well-being Coach in action from Backbase.
The Customer Lifetime Orchestrator (CLO)
We moved beyond basic personalization to achieve true “hyper-personalization.” The CLO is an AI-powered engine that understands a customer’s entire journey, predicting their needs and orchestrating real-time, relevant experiences across every touchpoint.
The future of banking isn’t just about dashboards — it’s about intelligent growth. We’re moving beyond the days of complex, manual orchestration for growth initiatives. The team at Backbase has built the Customer Lifetime Orchestrator (CLO) to fundamentally change how banks grow their product holdings. This platform enables banks to launch and manage powerful customer journeys in just a few clicks, unifying advanced technologies like MLs, LLMs and agentic AI behind a single, user-friendly interface, you can integrate CLO with any of existing Digital Marketing Automation tools.
See for yourself. The video below shows how we’re accelerating loan portfolio growth and unlocking a new era of simplicity and efficiency in banking. This is demo of only one of the objectives which is grow the loan portfolio.
The Invisible Future | Digital Twin
But even an AI Coach requires you to engage. The ultimate evolution of banking is not a better app. It’s no app at all. It’s a future where your finances manage themselves. Welcome to the era of the Invisible Bank, powered by your Financial Digital Twin.
We are on the cusp of the most significant transformation in the history of banking. We are moving from a reactive model of clicks and chores, to an empathetic one guided by an AI Coach, and finally, to an invisible and autonomous world managed by a Digital Twin. This isn’t just a new feature; it’s a fundamental rewiring of the relationship between people and their money. For banks, the future isn’t about building a better app; it’s about building the most trustworthy and effective AI agents — both the Coach and the CLO.
Their success will be measured not by app engagement, but by the autonomous agreements made between a customer’s Digital Twin and the bank’s intelligent systems. The next time you log into your banking app, ask yourself: is this a tool that serves me, or a cage I have to manage? The future of banking isn’t another app. It’s an empty screen and a life well-lived.
You would only open your “app” to give your Twin new instructions, adjust its guardrails, or have a deeper conversation with your AI Coach. The day-to-day work is gone.
Data & Insights as a Strategic Asset
Data is only valuable if it’s actionable. Our team built a robust, scalable data architecture that turns raw, siloed information into a strategic asset. By providing a unified data foundation, we enabled one bank’s marketing team to reduce campaign planning time from weeks to days, leading directly to a higher campaign ROI through more timely and targeted outreach.
The Technology & The Team
But impressive business outcomes are only possible with a world-class team and a robust technical philosophy. For the engineers, data scientists, and architects who might be reading this, here’s a look under the hood.
Our Technical Philosophy: Our commitment is to building production-grade, scalable, and responsible AI. We focus on creating systems that are not only intelligent but also secure, reliable, and transparent, ready to operate in the highly regulated world of financial services.
Architectural Excellence: We are building a multi-layered AI reference architecture that serves as the backbone for all our solutions. With layers for Data Engineering, Data Mesh, Model Fine-Tuning, Agents, ML, and Orchestration, our design is model-agnostic, ensuring we can always leverage the best foundation models — whether open-source or proprietary. Scalability and security are not afterthoughts; they are baked into the core of everything we build.
AI Specialization: Our team possesses a deep and diverse skill set. We are developing advanced models to process and understand complex financial data points, sophisticated NLP engines to analyze millions of customer feedback entries for actionable insights, and are even fine-tuning our own custom LLMs and SLM tailored specifically for the language of banking.
A Culture of Innovation: We’ve fostered a culture built on two pillars: intellectual curiosity and radical ownership. Our engineers work in agile, cross-functional squads, and we regularly host “Innovation Dojos” — our internal hackathons — to prototype bold new ideas. We are deeply committed to continuous learning and mentorship, empowering our engineers to grow into the architects and leaders of tomorrow. This isn’t a research lab; it’s an impact lab. The code we ship transforms the banking experience for millions of people. And doing it all while enjoying the incredible energy and quality of life here in Ho Chi Minh City is a privilege.
Looking Ahead: The Next Frontier
Our first year was about building the foundation. The years to come are about building the future. Our roadmap is focused on tackling the next frontier of challenges in banking. We are actively working on proactive fraud detection using predictive AI, building truly conversational banking assistants that can manage complex tasks, and further personalizing the end-to-end customer journey from onboarding to wealth management. Our journey is just beginning.
This milestone is a testament to the incredible team we have built and the forward-thinking partners who have joined us on this mission. I want to end with two invitations:
For banking leaders: Ready to unlock the power of AI for your institution? The future of banking is being built today.
For top talent: Are you an engineer or data scientist driven to solve the biggest challenges in finance? We’re building the team that will define the next generation of banking. We need your passion, your skills, and your ambition. Join us.
