KBank looks to startup tech to support the digital bank

Vongpat Bhuncharoen, president of KBank (China) noted the bank has set up four innovation hubs in Beijing, Shanghai, Shangzhen and Hangzhou. The bank will also invest around Bt8 billion during 2019-2024 in startups throughout the country, including those focused on fintech, blockchain, e-commerce and artificial intelligence (AI) 
“We want to develop and utilise new disruptive technology to provide better services to support our customers,” said Vongpat. “We have full license from China that enables us to provide full banking and digital banking in the country to support Chinese customers,” said Vongpat. 
The bank’s mission is to provide a full range of financial services via digital platforms connecting both corporate and retail customers between China and the Asean economic community (AEC). The bank in China has three branches, in Shenzhen, Chengdu and Shanghai, focusing on cross-border business to serve trading and foreign direct investment (FDI) between China and AEC. They are also tasked with creating value chain businesses in China along with business matching and advice for Chinese companies entering the AEC. 
The bank this year is also using robotic process automation (RPA) in operations management in order to increase operation capacity and process management. It also offers online supply-chain finance to support experimenting with online platforms, as well as online lending in order to engage partners to build risk frameworks and develop customer channels. 
He said is also transforming from a traditional bank into a digital banking and digital life platform. Digital banking comes with a digital supply chain platform and a digital retail credit platform to improve customer convenience. Meanwhile, the digital life platform focuses on the middle class with an interest in tourism and travel, healthcare and education in order to support customer services excellence. 
“We integrated the licence, fintech and life platforms to build our new services in order to support customers, such as for car instalments, online small loans and consumer loans. The bank also offers digital channel construction via Internet banking, our website and mobile app. We are a small bank in the huge China economy. Therefore we are leveraging our strength to build a bridge between China and AEC. We are the first digital bank from Asia to run full digital banking in China this year, to support the behaviour and demand of customers from consumers to large corporates,” said the president.
By the end of this year, he says, the bank expects to generate a 10-times increase in the number of customers. The bank had around 6,000 customers last year.