THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

KBank adjusts strategy for 'digital disruption' era

KBank adjusts strategy for 'digital disruption' era

Aims to create new services to stay relevant in a unique way

Being a leader in digital banking is not only the mission and key task of Kasikornbank – it is also its main strategy to keep its brand relevant to consumers in the “digital disruption” era. 
Bankers these days need to be able to do something new to protect their business and create innovative services to fit consumers’ digital lifestyles. Besides changing the behaviour of consumers, digital disruption accelerates the rise of financial technology, Kasikornbank’s president Teeranun Srihong said.
Digital disruption has the potential to shrink the role and relevance of today’s banks, and simultaneously help them create better, faster, cheaper services that make them an even more essential part of everyday life for institutions and individuals.
Teeranun said that to empower KBank’s competitive competency, it needed to have a strategic capability platform. The K Transformation project consists of four main elements – big data, risk management, multiple channels, and a deposit core banking system. The bank has been deploying these in recent years. Most recently, in mid-July, it added the fourth element with the deployment of a deposit core banking system. 
It is hoped that all four elements will help KBank have the capability to develop product and service innovations to fit consumers’ daily digital lifestyles. 
“Our mission is to be a brand in consumers’ minds and be relevant to their digital lifestyles. We are already the leader in digital banking, but this is not enough – it will not guarantee that we will win in the digital-disruption storm. We need to diversify and need to keep developing product and service innovation, as well as process innovation. We need to put all efforts into protecting our brand and organisation towards digital disruption,” Teeranun said.
KBank currently has 7.5 million active accounts on its digital-banking platform, including cyber-banking and mobile banking. The bank aims to have 9 million active digital-banking accounts by the end of this year. The total transaction value of KBank’s digital channel this year is expected to be Bt4.83 trillion. 
“Now 50 per cent of our 15 million active accounts use our digital banking services. Our digital banking service is continuously growing by 30-40 per cent per year. However, this year we are seeing a slowdown in cyber-banking, with flat growth through the first five months of this year, while mobile banking was still growing by 136 per cent,” Teeranun said.
Teeranun recently said at the Thailand ICT Management Forum that the bank’s strategy, called K-Strategy, was long-term risk-adjusted sustainable profitability with customer-centricity in order to be customers’ main bank. The three key strategies were product solutions, branding and marketing, and service quality. 
“Banks that do not adjust and improve their competitiveness will be out of this [digital] trend, they will be brands that are not relevant to consumers’ daily digital lifestyles. If we do not keep improving our competitiveness, we will become a utility-payment firm because services of the other financial-technology firms can replace the bank’s services. 
“Major brands need to evolve to be always in consumers’ minds in the digital-disruption era,” Teeranun said.
 
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