Affin Hwang Powers Digitization with Confluent

Affin Hwang Asset Management, a leading asset management firm in Malaysia with over RM 80 billion under management and nearly 200,000 clients, embarked on a digitization journey to modernize its core operations. Faced with siloed legacy systems and increasingly strained batch processes, the firm sought a solution to provide near-real-time updates to key systems and enhance the customer experience. They turned to Confluent to replace their slow, batch-oriented processes with real-time data streams, enabling seamless integration of systems and unlocking new business opportunities.

Confluent's data streaming platform has enabled Affin Hwang to break down data silos and provide a unified, 360-degree view of their customers. By leveraging Confluent Cloud and ksqlDB, the firm can now process and transform data in transit, ensuring that the right information is available to the right teams at the right time. This has streamlined internal processes, reduced cloud data warehouse spending, and significantly accelerated time to market for new products and services.

The implementation of Confluent has not only addressed the challenges posed by legacy systems but has also opened doors to innovation and collaboration. With real-time data streaming, Affin Hwang can now onboard customers more efficiently, offer new products with dynamic pricing, and seamlessly integrate with third-party eWallet providers. The company is also exploring further integration with AWS Step Functions and Lambdas to maximize the value of its data in motion.

Allen Woo, Chief Innovation Officer at Affin Hwang Asset Management, emphasizes the transformative impact of Confluent: "Data that took us a whole day to get previously is now streaming via Confluent and available in seconds." This shift has not only improved operational efficiency but has also empowered the firm to deliver a superior customer experience and capitalize on emerging market opportunities.

Value Results:

• Accelerated Time to Market: Deployment time reduced from 6 months to just 2 weeks.

• Eliminated Data Access Delays: Near-real-time data availability, reducing day-long delays to seconds.

• Enhanced Operational Efficiency: Streamlined internal and onboarding processes.

• Reduced Cloud Data Warehouse Spend: Optimized data processing and storage costs.

• New Business Opportunities: Enabled the launch of new products and partnerships.