With the increasing popularity of digital banks in the last few years, TMRW has emerged as one of the fastest-growing and popular digital banks in Thailand and Indonesia. Even though the region has seen a large number of digital banks popping up, TMRW has been ahead in the race by empowering the digital generation with an entire suite of banking solutions through a smart, mobile-only app.
The digital bank offers a suite of banking products and services that are designed to keep up with our fast-paced lifestyle. With TMRW, you get the chance to spend more time enjoying life rather than doing tedious over-the-counter transactions. TMRW’s smart insights also help its customers to track their spending and savings while providing useful and valuable advice that lets you take full control of your money. TMRW tracks and monitors your bills and makes sure you don’t overspend and take care of your payments and bills in a timely manner.
International Finance Magazine sat down with Kevin Lam, Head of TMRW and Group Digital Banking, where he provided valuable insights and a better understanding of the company. Keep reading to learn more about how TMRW functions and why it is emerging as the next big thing in the Southeast Asia fintech market.
Q/A article
Q. Congratulations to UOB TMRW for winning the “Best Digital Bank” awards in 2021 for Thailand and Indonesia. Tell us more about what TMRW did in these two countries.
We launched TMRW in Thailand in March 2019 within 14 months and Indonesia in August 2020 within 11 months. We were also the first digital bank in ASEAN to build an AI-driven digital engagement engine to serve insights and solutions that are relevant to these customers based on their banking behaviour in real-time.
We are closing in towards one million digital customers since launch and more than 70 percent of these customers are new to UOB. Through TMRW, we successfully acquired a new customer demographic of “Young Professionals” and “Young Professional Families” where 75 percent of these customers are aged below 40. We also adapted TMRW to local market conditions and language preferences given our regional focus.
We strongly believe in the importance of customer engagement and advocacy. Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) for both Thailand (NPS ≥ 40) and Indonesia (NPS ≥ 50) is close to the local leaders, indicating a high level of customer advocacy. This shows we are innovating in the right direction and scaling our digital architecture in customer-centric ways.
In December 2021, TMRW Pay was launched in Indonesia. This was an e-commerce loan that enables consumers in Indonesia to manage their budgeting needs conveniently. TMRW Pay offers customers the choice of deferred payment services, with zero interest for up to 90 days and instant credit approval through TMRW’s partner, Bhinneka’s website and app.
Q. Can you share some of TMRW’s innovations and how do you see it evolving in the region and your home markets?
As digital adoption has accelerated in the region, digital banking has now become the dominant preference for many. Four months after the launch of TMRW in Indonesia, we launched UOB TMRW in Singapore in October 2021, bringing together the innovation of our digital bank TMRW with the scale and product depth of our mobile app UOB Mighty onto one platform. We enhanced our digital on-boarding and digital serve capabilities, thus lowering our acquisition costs.
Recently, we were the first in the region to disrupt the traditional banking rewards experience. Through UOB TMRW, our digital banking platform in Singapore, we have built a rewards feature, named “Rewards+”, so customers can track rewards and cashback on every credit card transaction they make.
We continuously strive to drive our franchise value with our simple, engaging and transparent brand promise. Leveraging data and artificial intelligence, we aim to curate increasingly hyper-personalised banking experiences and financial solutions for our customers.
TMRW has both an attack and defence strategy. We attack like a disruptor in the markets where we are smaller and apply the learnings to defend in the larger home markets. Through our efforts, we have more than three million digitally enabled customers in ASEAN, which we now want to double to seven million retail customers being served digitally across ASEAN.
We have an exciting roadmap ahead as we continue to enhance our capabilities across digital on-boarding, payments, gamified finance and education as well as lifestyle. We aim to make banking increasingly frictionless and effortless, maintain our high-security standards and continuously improve app performance and stability.
Q. How does TMRW support and create value for UOB?
We have three business imperatives as we concurrently support UOB’s digital transformation.
Firstly, consistent with our engagement-led strategy, we intend to accelerate innovation, particularly in hyper-personalised digital banking experiences and progressive solutions to increase engagement and grow customer lifetime value.
We see hyper-personalisation as comprising 2 elements:
(1) adaptive banking through a dynamic User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI); and
(2) using Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning models that enable us to grow with our customers as their financial needs mature based on their transaction data.
This means that, in time, each customer will see an interface that is unique to them and will be provided with financial solutions that are relevant to their specific life stages.
Second, we aim to acquire customers at scale across ASEAN focusing on a growing profile of customers who prefer digital banking relationships. We also collaborate with like-minded partners to extend our reach into ecosystems and develop win-win value propositions for the business and our customers.
Third, we seek to achieve a competitive cost advantage by transitioning our customers onto digital journeys. In doing so, we enhance the customers’ experience, lower our cost-to-serve and cost-of-acquisition through the use of chatbots and automated processes.
We have embarked on an exciting new phase in our digital retail journey, where adaptive banking will make the digital banking of tomorrow smarter and more intuitive for our customers across ASEAN. Our relentless focus on engagement sets us apart in a crowded field of digital banking players in the region.
Q. What objective did TMRW accomplish by participating in the International Finance Awards 2021?
As a challenger bank in Indonesia and Thailand, our goal every day is to continue to bring to our customers the simple, engaging and transparent banking experience which they have come to expect from TMRW. It is an honour and very heartening to have our efforts recognised as the best in class in the two markets in which TMRW operates by the International Finance Award’s global panel of judges.
This recognition validates our strategy and strengthens our resolve to continuously innovate to deepen and enhance our customer relationships.