SCB aims for 12 million users of its digital banking platform in the next three years through 2021.

Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) aims for 12 million users of its digital banking platform in the next three years through 2021, with a much-touted digital lending service set to roll out in the first three months of 2019.

The number of online channel users is expected to reach 9 million by the end of this year, said president and chief executive Arthid Nanthawithaya.

SCB’s online channel users have soared to 8.5 million from 2.3 million in June 2016. The upsurge came after SCB disrupted the country’s payment and money transfer business by waiving fees for such transactions over digital channel, Mr Arthid said.

SCB is the country’s second-largest mobile banking service provider after Kasikornbank, which has almost 10 million users.

The number of merchants in SCB’s QR code payment system exceeded 1 million at the end of October, up from 4,000 in September last year, Mr Arthid said.

The bank’s digital lending platform will see its public launch in the first quarter of 2019 as the first product developed by the Ten-X unit.

Ten-X consists of several teams creating strategic products to enhance SCB’s capability of doing digital business.

Each Ten-X team has up to 50 members, including various experts, and their task is to do “humanised banking at scale” with new customer-centric products.

Mr Arthid said the bank has two Ten-X teams and a third team being set up with the mission of scaling up digital wealth management. He said Ten-X’s hierarchical line of command is capped at three.

The bank is entering the final phase of SCB Transformation, which began in mid-2016 with a total investment of more than 40 billion baht.

“We focused on repair, improvement and building of the bank’s core foundations of digital and information during the first two years of our transformation,” Mr Arthid said. “The next three years will be the time of utilising digital capabilities.”

Arak Sutivong, chief financial officer and chief strategy officer, said the bank has set a lending growth target of 5-7% next year, focusing on unsecured loans.

The bank aims to expand the wealth management business by 20-25% and increase wealth assets under management by 8-10% in 2019 under a partnership with Julius Baer of Switzerland.