KBank aims high in bid for data-driven value

KBank yesterday announced a mission to create better services for all clients, by integrating data, human resources and business partners towards a brand-new banking business. Executives say they have developed a vision for pushing the bank forward and taking advantage of the synergy between experienced staff members and Artificial Intelligence.
Predee Daochai, KBank president, said that within the next two years, Thais will be able to access new financial services from local banks as a result of their cooperation in the financial infrastructure, as follows:
First, an upgrade of the PromtPay project to move beyond providing a Thai standard-based QR code system service only in this country. It would move towards spreading the Thai standard throughout the CLMV+3 – Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and China – with the aim of allowing customers with mobile banking apps from all Thai banks to make payments abroad.
A business scan customer (B Scan C) service would also be introduced to offer greater convenience for consumers in making payments via a mobile phone.
Second, the Thailand Blockchain Community Initiative project has begun offering a letter-of-guarantee service. A total of 22 Thai and international financial institutions, plus seven business and state enterprises sectors, have joined this project. It is expected that the growth of such transactions would reach approximately 40,000 items and increase sharply beyond that point, as more agencies join the initiative.
Third, the National Digital ID (NDID) Project, which is designed to allow individuals to confirm their identity online, would allow consumers to open bank accounts anywhere, anytime without having to go to a bank branch. Their use for online loan applications, loans and opening of securities trading accounts, plus white-label ATMs would help banks manage their costs more efficiently and reinforce the Thai banking system’s position at the forefront of Asean, he said.
Kattiya Indaravijaya, KBank president, said it aims for Bt30 billion of data-driven lending, and to earn data-driven income at not less than 50 per cent of total income, up from the current 5 per cent proportion – and achieve that within the next two years.
To achieve that goal, staff are key to creating business value based on data. Data analytics potential has been enhanced organisation-wide, including training above 500 employees in business analytics and 284 employees in machine learning analytics, she noted.
“To create a data-driven culture, we have blended human intelligence with technology to become an ‘augmented intelligence’ with the aim of achieving cognitive banking status,” said Kattiya.
“We also assure data privacy for all customers as individual names would be removed from the process of data analytics, and private information would not be shared with a third party without consent from customers,” she said. 
She said that about 80 bank branches out of the 985 total nation-wide would be closed this year but 30 new branches and banking agents will open. Employees would not be laid off, but instead reskilled, she assured. 
Meanwhile, Ruangroj Poonpol, chairman of Kasikorn Business-Technology Group said that the bank will invest Bt5 billion in its IT system this year in order to upgrade its core banking, re-architecture and bring new servers online – with the purpose to become the best technology company in Southeast Asia and one of the world’s technology hubs within 2020.
The bank will build up its capacity to accommodate the rapid rise of online banking transaction in order to avoid a repeat of the systems crash that happened last year.
“This year our IT capacity could reach more than 10,000 online financial transactions per second, up from over a thousand transactions currently,” he said. 
The goal of cognitive banking is to deliver services that are highly intelligent, highly adaptive and highly personalised, he said. The bank also wants to recruit 300 more IT personnel, he added.