WeBank Wins Four Awards from The Asian Banker, Its Digital Inclusive Finance Practices Gain International Recognition
On March 12th, at the 2026 International Excellence in Retail Financial Services Awards ceremony hosted by The Asian Banker, WeBank successfully defended its titles of "Best Digital Bank in Asia Pacific" and "Best Digital Bank in China," and for the first time, won two major awards: "Best SME Bank in China (Digital Bank)" and "Best Customer Experience Project in Asia Pacific (Weilidai Sign Language Customer Service Project)," thanks to its leading technological innovation capabilities and high-quality inclusive finance practices.
WeBank Wins Four Awards from The Asian Banker
The Asian Banker Awards Programme is a globally renowned awards initiative in the financial industry. Its award evaluation rules adhere to the highest international standards and are widely recognized by the financial sector and industry research institutions for their strong professionalism, fair and authoritative judging, and extensive coverage. It attracts comprehensive competition from financial institutions and fintech service platforms across the Asia-Pacific region, with its influence radiating globally.
Seventh Consecutive Year as "Best in Asia Pacific," Demonstrating Digital Bank Strength
Over the past decade, global digital banks have entered a period of rapid development. Statistics show that the number of licensed digital banks worldwide has rapidly increased from 48 in 2014 to over 400 today. Leveraging flexible and efficient technological architectures and innovative service models, digital banks have broken the boundaries of traditional financial services, carving out a unique path of digital inclusive development.
As China's first digital bank, WeBank has always taken technology as its core engine, continuously delving into key core technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and big data. It has built a digital operation and management system, gradually growing into a leading digital bank widely recognized globally. Relying on leading digital technology, WeBank continues to expand the breadth and depth of inclusive financial services, precisely addressing the pain points and difficulties of customer groups such as micro and small enterprises, individual businesses, and the vast number of individual customers. By the end of 2025, WeBank had cumulatively served over 430 million individual customers and over 7 million micro and small enterprise customers, using technological power to bridge the "last mile" of inclusive finance.
Currently, artificial intelligence technology is profoundly reshaping the global financial landscape. Facing the opportunities of the new era, WeBank took the lead in 2025 in systematically advancing its "AI-native Bank" strategy. From technological infrastructure and toolchain construction to diversified application models, it has comprehensively strengthened its AI capability foundation, continuously deepened the integration of AI in all business scenarios, focused on reshaping organizational structures and governance systems, and accelerated the transition from "digital-native" to "AI-native," driving business transformation with the power of AI and continuing to lead the future direction of digital banking. Currently, WeBank has deployed over a hundred AI application scenarios, more than 800 AI Agents, and over 60 "digital employees" have officially "started work," empowering the entire financial service process with AI technology to continuously improve service efficiency and optimize customer experience.
At this awards ceremony, WeBank successfully defended its titles of "Best Digital Bank in Asia Pacific" and "Best Digital Bank in China" due to its outstanding digital banking practices. This marks the seventh consecutive time it has won the "Best Digital Bank in Asia Pacific" award and the eighth time for the "Best Digital Bank in China" award, fully demonstrating its leading position in the digital banking field.
The Asian Banker commented that, based on its leading digital technology capabilities, WeBank has formed a distinctive and differentiated matrix of inclusive financial services, exploring a new, commercially sustainable model for the development of digital inclusive finance. This allows more micro and small enterprises and the general public to equally enjoy financial services, helping inclusive finance achieve high-quality development.
Finance for Good, Upholding Original Aspiration; Inclusiveness and Warmth Gain International Recognition
In this selection, WeBank's outstanding practices in serving SMEs and in accessibility innovation were also highly recognized, winning the two heavyweight awards of "Best SME Bank in China (Digital Bank)" and "Best Customer Experience Project in Asia Pacific (Weilidai Sign Language Customer Service Project)" for the first time.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the capillaries of the real economy and a key target group for inclusive financial services. Since launching "Weiye Loan," China's first online unsecured working capital loan product for enterprises in 2017, WeBank has continuously explored a commercially sustainable path for digital inclusive microfinance. It uses digital means to precisely solve the financing challenges of micro and small enterprises characterized as "short, small, frequent, and urgent."
By the end of 2025, the "Weiye Loan" business had covered 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government nationwide. Cumulatively, over 7 million SMEs had applied for loans, with over 1.8 million customers receiving credit lines, and the total cumulative credit granted reached 1.8 trillion yuan. The Asian Banker commented that behind this set of impressive figures is WeBank's vivid practice of using digital technology to precisely channel financial resources to thousands of industries and millions of micro and small entities.
Technology has strength, but service has even more warmth. WeBank has always adhered to the principle of "Finance for Good," integrating the "customer-centric" philosophy into the entire service process and actively promoting the construction of accessible financial services. In 2015, WeBank began forming a dedicated accessibility team, launched the Weilidai remote video identity verification process, and hired full-time sign language experts to form a sign language service team. This allows the hearing-impaired community to also equally, conveniently, and safely enjoy financial services. Weilidai also became the first banking-type financial product in the industry to launch a sign language video customer service. Currently, Weilidai has successfully disbursed over 265,000 loans to hearing-impaired service customers, with a total loan amount exceeding 1.17 billion yuan.
Winning these four major awards represents the high recognition from an international authoritative institution for WeBank's technological innovation, inclusive practices, and service capabilities. It is also a full affirmation of its firm commitment to the mission of "Making Finance Inclusive for All." In the future, WeBank will continue to use technology as its engine and inclusiveness as its original aspiration, constantly deepening financial innovation, improving service quality and efficiency, and continuously injecting a steady stream of financial momentum into the high-quality development of the real economy.
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