Fine-tuning Small Language Models to Better Understand Local Financial Service Contexts, Domain Terminology, and Ambiguous Customer Queries
TAIPEI, June 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- To enhance operational efficiency and customer experience, Cathay Financial Holdings (Cathay FHC) continues to advance the application of generative AI in financial services through its generative AI technical framework, GAIA, and AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS) strategy. Building on last year's validation of large language models (LLMs) for financial applications, Cathay FHC recently unveiled its latest AI research findings at NVIDIA GTC Taipei 2026, demonstrating how open-source small language models (SLMs) can be fine-tuned for customer intent classification and applied to future financial service scenarios.
The study evaluated several leading open-source models from Meta, TAIDE, TAME, NVIDIA and OpenAI. Preliminary results showed that, under the testing framework, fine-tuned SLMs may reduce dependence on complex prompt engineering and vector retrieval modules, potentially simplifying system architecture while lowering future operational and maintenance complexity.
