In this era of technology, a digital strategy is vital for banks to connect with customers as well as to enhance the customer’s banking experience. – Photo by Pablo Nidam on Scopio
THE continued move towards having a greater digital presence amid the ongoing pandemic has helped the AmBank Group reduce costs and at the same time provide better value proposition to serve its customers.
“It has brought costs down much lower with a better reach. We can now conduct customer onboarding digitally with eKYC and fully contactless through AmOnline in the individual retail segment.
“Retail customers can save, invest, borrow, insure, apply for a card, and consolidate their debts even from other institutions on our AmOnline app. For AmBank credit card purchases they have an option to go to AmOnline and convert this into an instalment plan, ” he said.
“We recently also launched what we believe is the nation’s first fully contactless onboarding for small and medium enterprise (SME) customers, ” AmBank group chief operations officer Datuk Iswaraan Suppiah (pic below) told StarBiz.
With this new development, the bank’s SME customers would now have no need to come to its physical branches to open a bank account. The entire process to apply for an account and for directors to review and verify the application is performed entirely online.
He shared that there has been rapid growth in online banking transactions of late and this had been propelled even further with the prolonged pandemic situation.
“Digital started off as another touchpoint or channel for the customer but this pandemic has made it very necessary for every bank to have a digital presence to connect with customers.
“The customer now would find it more difficult to walk into a physical branch which was one of the predominant ways of touching base with customers,
“Due to the new normal, we see digital channel utilisation increasing – just within the span of a year when comparing August 2019 to August 2020. Digital channel usage has increased 300% among all our customers – retail, corporate and everyone who does business with us. Most of our customers touch base with us is through digital means, ” he added.
Digital strategy
Iswaraan said that a digital strategy is powerful in this era of rapid technology advances to enable order of magnitude improvements to customer experience and this has been further spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic.
One of the key aspects of AmBank’s digital strategy has been a strong focus on creating compelling reasons for customers to rely on AmBank as their primary operating bank.
He pointed out that the banking business is based and built upon the relationship a bank has with its customers. With the move to an increased online engagement, the challenge would be to translate the personal and emotional connect to the digital front.
In the individual segment, digital enables AmBank to use technology to extend the same level of personalisation that hitherto was provided via human relationship managers to affluent customers, to every customer.
“Usually the products in this space are quite generic but with data we can understand each individual customer based on how they interact with us or even by their transactions with us. Through this we can now offer bespoke solutions and advice via technology and make our offerings more meaningful to every individual, ” he said.
In the small and medium enterprise segment, AmBank’s emphasis is to help customers digitalise and create sustainability for their business.
For large enterprises, AmBank helps customers operate their payments, collections and cashflows more efficiently and prides itself in its ability to customise banking solutions based on open APIs to help mid to large corporates achieve seamless value chains.
“We also are the leading provider to fintechs via our sponsor banking offerings that allow them to access the national payments system or perform electronic KYC via our open APIs. We have many new APIs under-way for wallet and remittance providers, ” he said.
Across all segments, the group is increasingly investing in improving the usage of data and advanced analytics, to tailor its solutions so that it would become more relevant to its customers.
“This is quite important for us. And it creates a competitive advantage since we can really analyse customers’ data and in turn anticipate their needs better. One of our initiatives is to be an intelligence-driven bank – to understand the customer better and be AI-ready.
Physical presence
Despite the move to a greater digital presence today, the group still views it necessary to have a physical presence although some features will change.
“Four or five years ago, a physical branch processed most of the customer transactions of the group. But now 90% of transactions happen through digital channels. The importance of the branch has gone down, but the physical branches will not totally go away, ” Iswaraan said.
“For example, Amazon which started with digital has now also opted to have a physical presence as well. I believe the branches will coexist with our digital presence but maybe the proposition for the physical branch – such as the size of a branch or how it is staffed – may change. This is so that the branch will complement our digital presence, ” he explained.
IT security
Meanwhile, with the increased move to digital presence, the bank said it had to also beef up and continuously be vigilant on cyber security.
“In those days, if somebody wants to rob the bank, they have to enter the bank physically. They have to be in Malaysia and enter one of the branches with a weapon.
“But the thieves now don’t even have to be in the country to rob. They don’t have to be Malaysians as they can be from anywhere. So, the way we used to safeguard assets have changed, ” Iswaraan said.
“IT security can never be undermined but it also keeps maturing as in the bar has to keep going higher and higher. We really need to be very vigilant and take precaution.
“And sometimes, the customer’s convenience comes at the expense of IT security and this is always a balancing game for us, ” he added.
He also highlighted that the AmBank group places a high emphasis on IT security in any product or service before it is rolled out.
