SCB focused on exponential growth in disruptive projects

“SCB has been working relentlessly to execute its successful digital transformation,” said Arthid Nanthawaithaya, president and chief executive officer of SCB, at a press conference in Chiang Mai last Friday.
“In the past three years, SCB has invested up to Bt40 billion to digitally transform its business structure. We are aiming to increase digital transactions to 65 per cent of total transactions next year, from 55 per cent this year,” he said.
“The most important factor in digitally transforming a business structure is not technology, but a clear understanding of the needs of our customers. In 2019, SCB will focus on shifting our mindset to be more customer-centric and offer services that address the needs of our customer base,” he said. 
“SCB will work to expand both its core business as well as its disruptive business model comprising of projects such as Digital Ventures, SCB Abacus and the new SCB10X project. We expect to see linear growth in the core business in 2019 while aiming to achieve exponential growth in our new disruptive businesses,” said Arak Sutivong, senior executive vice president and chief financial officer and chief strategic officer of SCB. 
In 2019, SCB will be focusing on digital projects that aim to provide answers to unaddressed pain points of customers. SCB has set up the SCB10X project, which aims to provide digital loans services to SCB customers, he said. 
“We aim to provide digital loans services to customers, which they can access through the SCB Easy mobile application. Customers can apply for loans and set up the repayment rate within the time period of five minutes,” Kaweewut Temphuwaphat, head of SCB10X project explained. 
Through the digital loans service, customers can verify themselves digitally and will receive the disbursement instantly once the process is completed. No human interaction will be needed, he explained. 
The SCB10X project is still currently in the testing stage and SCB aims to test the product in a limited market in 2019, according to Kaweewut. 
The new SCB10X digital lending platform is expected to reduce the cost of offering loans services to customers by up to 50 per cent, according to the CEO. 
SCB is also aiming to expand its core business such as traditional loans services. 
“Currently, the loans business makes up about 70 per cent of SCB’s total revenue. We aim to expand this business by tapping new markets comprising small business owners or small SMEs,” Arak said. 
SCB aims to expand its loans business by 5 to 7 per cent in 2019 by tapping into the new aforementioned market segment, according to Arak. 
“Traditionally, small SMEs cannot make use of traditional bank loans services as they lack the required financial credentials, leading them to turn to informal lending options which usually comes with high risks and interest rates,” he explained.
“Hence, SCB aims to provide more unsecured lending to small SMEs and formal lending to this market segment. Our aim is to offer unsecured loans to small SMEs with manageable risks,” he said.
Meanwhile, the bank has reported to the Stock Exchange of Thailand a net profit of Bt32.983 billion in the third quarter of this year. Its stocks closed on Friday at Bt139 per unit.