We’re still buzzing from the energy at Google I/O extended in Da Nang where KBTG was officially revealed to industry colleagues and tech talents in Vietnam for the first time. As our opening speaker, KBTG Vietnam’s Managing Director, Thanussak Thanyasiri, took the stage on the subject of banking trends that are predicted to define services in the near future. Thanussak carries over five years of experience in software delivery and has been part of the KBTG Transformation team for the past two years, helping to improve quality and productivity of software delivery. Let’s see what he had to say.
Future of the Banking Industry
KBTG works in two main directions, to run the bank and to create the future. How the banking industry develops is essential to both. We believe that banking will be integrated as part of everyday life for all customer groups, enabled through digital platforms and partnership ecosystems. Our services cover every part of the process, from technology research and innovation, infrastructure management, to business development. These six trends can give us an overview of what the future will be like in this industry and how we can embrace them.
Six Trends That Define the Future of Banking
1. Digital Explosion
This trend applies to every industry, we are targeting digital growth over expanding traditional branches. KBTG’s flagship product, K PLUS, is currently Thailand’s number one digital banking application with 18.6 million users, having seen 3.5x growth in the past three years. Our money management platform MAKE by KBank is gearing up to reach 1 million customers at the end of this year. The digital lifestyle is now reaching customers of all generations and demographics, it is essential to have reliable platforms for all their needs.
2. Automated Human Touch
Accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, AI and big data has been brought into our everyday lives to enable as many contactless transactions as possible. KBTG aims to evolve into metaverse branches and smart branches, taking our services to any location customers are.
Harmonized channel experience will synchronize data in real-time to allow a seamless experience from virtual to physical, through every branch and platform, creating a sense of stability and convenience.
We started testing virtual assistance a couple years back, bringing voice recognition to customer service, Natural Language Processing (NLP) in chatbots, AI in investment (robo advisor), and many more. Real time asset appraisal utilizes AI to analyze assets, for example to determine the value of a car through AI Optical Character Recognizing (OCR). With these advancements, we hope to automate and increase the efficiency of human touch for customers and workers alike.
3. Omni-Banking and Hyper-Personalization
Aligned with the previous trend, hyper-personalization is the next level of marketing messages, leveraged by AI and data from actual transactions to offer messages that are truly relevant to each customer. Although this is becoming widely used, KBTG uses our own technology behind this process, which means we have a deeper understanding of our customers and their needs.
A use case example would be the ability to offer loans to direct target groups instead of sending the same message to everyone, and being able to reduce approval time within 15 minutes. It is also the engine behind the lending infrastructure for partner platforms. Our data combined with customer data offers a truly personalized touch, having achieved 5x customer growth and 6x loan booking amount in one year.
4. Borderless Transactions
KBank’s strategy is to become a top regional digital bank, integrating our services to add convenience in customer lives. We are expanding in every location and action, transactions are made simple and secure. Our flagship product, K PLUS, is now available in Vietnam as the first country outside of Thailand, and we are working to offer the same to the region including AEC+3 countries.
5. Fintech-as-a-Service
We are the engine behind many banking services and infrastructures, offering fintech-as-a-service opens up another level of possibilities for other sectors by integrating services within customer actions. KBTG collaborates with partners in various industries, serving as a building block and enabling them to offer new business models to serve customer needs.
We have co-joined lifestyle banking with education, tourism, online platform partners, and these are all use cases for fintech-as-a-service. We are soon bringing this to Vietnam, starting with loan booking, lending services and linking up with local partners.
6. Decentralized Finance and Web 3.0
Originally a traditional bank, we are one of the industries highly challenged by future disruptions. The management took a bold approach, working in the direction that we should disrupt ourselves from day 1, which is why we have put in so much effort to research, innovate and develop the range of our services. In one of the most significant digital trends KBTG is also adept in decentralized finance and blockchain fields. Vietnam is ranked highly among early adopters of DeFi and we hope to gather many talented people here to help us excel.
In Thailand, KBTG is a front runner in this space, launching products in the DeFi world and engaging partnerships to promote adoption. We run KASIKORN X (KX), a company which aims to create trust in the trustless world of DeFi, a sprinting S-curve factory. KX launched Coral in 2021, a super simple NFT marketplace that allows purchase with fiat currencies. Its most recent product is Bigfin, a crypto portfolio tracker to help investors keep track and manage their investments with ease. We introduced asset tokenization to make investment and ownership more accessible to the public. Kubix is one of the first ICO portals in the country, having launched its first digital token on a movie-based project which gathered over 265 million baht in funds. This is only the beginning.
How We Define the Future of Banking at KBTG
Is it that predictable? Not at all! We make sure to fully recognise the versatility of the financial and technology sectors to always stay on top of our game. At this point in time, these points are what we think will lead the future of banking for the next generation of users and further enable our customers with even more possibilities, but we are always prepared to handle any challenges that come our way.
If you’re just as interested in the future as us, join our team at https://www.kbtg.tech/career . We’re currently hiring in Thailand, China and Vietnam, with more countries coming soon!
