KBank eyes B100bn in digital loans
Kasikornbank (KBank), the country’s largest mobile banking service provider by users, aims for 100 billion baht in digital loans next year, significantly up from 20 billion baht expected for this year.
The bank’s main product focus in 2020 is digital loans, said Ruangroj Poonpol, chairman of Kasikorn Business Technology Group (KBTG).
KBank’s subsidiary is expected to develop the infrastructure for the digital banking platform of K-Plus in preparation for the business growth, he said.
In addition to users of both K-Plus and the online platform for merchants, K-Plus Shop, the bank will offer digital loans to users of its digital platform partners, particularly Lazada, Shopee, Grab and Kasikorn-Line.
K-Plus has 11.4 million users and targets reaching 11.8 million by the end of this year. Merchants on K-Plus Shop number 2 million, while users of Line Thailand total 43 million.
“With K-Plus’s strong partnership strategy, it should facilitate digital loan growth and help the bank achieve the ambitious goal next year,” Mr Ruangroj said.
Under its K-Plus AI-Driven Experience project, KBTG will adopt a system to support digital loan expansion next year and improve credit scoring and debt default predictions to increase the accuracy rate of digital loan offerings.
Mr Ruangroj said transaction volume via K-Plus is expected to reach 2 billion by year-end from 1.5 billion now, while transaction numbers at peak period are forecast to hit 50,000 per second this year from below the 50,000 mark at the moment.
To prepare for the heavy traffic, KBTG is planning to double capacity, he said.
For next year, KBTG plans to develop the infrastructure system of K-Plus in all areas, especially database.
The company also aims to increase staff to 3,000 from 2,100 now, focusing on data scientists, artificial intelligence and interface designers. The company typically spends 5 billion baht a year for IT and digital investment budget, and the amount would remain unchanged next year.