Krungsri rejigs e-business units

The restructuring will allow bank staff to focus on customer and commercial solutions and fintech, Thakorn Piyapan, head of Krungsri Consumer Group and head of digital banking and innovation, said yesterday.

Each bank has its own model in studying fintech, but Krungsri wants the entire bank to participate in the trend of digital banking and fintech in order to adjust the culture of the bank to full digital banking and full innovation, he said.

The restructuring is part of the three-year plan (2016-18) launched after it studied fintech since 2014 and sponsored the Krungsri Uni-Startup project last year.

The bank is going into the second stage of investing in fintech start-ups by joining with RISE, an expert in start-ups and the first corporate accelerator in Thailand, to launch the Krungsri RISE Fintech Accelerator project.

Krungsri will leverage its 20 million-strong customer base to help fintech start-ups.

“We can provide consumer insight and business intelligence and tailor match-making, potential business partnerships and investment to them,” he said.

The third stage is investment through venture capital. The bank has discussed this with Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, its major shareholder.

The bank is looking to see if Krungsri RISE Fintech Accelerator’s output of fintech start-ups can help it solve the problems of customers and if the solutions can help solve the bank’s problems. 

The bank can also learn from the Krungsri RISE programme what are the trends in fintech now and in coming years, which could open up opportunities and cause disruptions to the banking industry 

Supachai Parchariyanon, founder and managing director of RISE, said the project was not an incubator.

Fintech start-ups that want to join the programme must grow enough to present ideas. They want knowhow about marketing and capital from investors. Krungsri RISE will select 10 teams of fintech start-ups to participate in an intensive eight-week boot camp coached by top professional experts in the start-up business. 

The selected teams will learn and gain practical experience with mentoring from regional coaches plus one-on-one problem-solving sessions.

The selected teams will finally present their applications to both local and overseas investors for commercialisation.

Fintech start-ups from Krungsri RISE are not required to pay fees to Krungsri and RISE or let Krungsri and RISE take equity positions. 

They can take their applications to find partners themselves, Thakorn said.

Supachai said Microsoft will offer cloud service, Visa will allow the fintech start-up participants to access Visa’s infrastructure APIs and Facebook will sponsor the exclusive workshop.

Thakorn said the trend of bad debts in unsecured loans is improving because major customers of Krungsri Consumet Consumer are salaried people and lending, especially credit card and instalment loans, have shown growing momentum.

Outstanding loans should reach Bt131 billion to Bt132 billion by the end of this year from Bt128 billion currently. Credit card loans are expected to rise by 12-13 per cent and personal loans by 5 per cent, even though personal loans so far are still flat with the end of last year, he said.