Enhancing financial well-being for Thais through affordable solutions

Siam Commercial Bank’s solutions allow customers to have a more personalised banking experience through the deployment of the latest technologies.

It is a known fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation across the banking and finance industries, having migrated commerce and financial activities toward digital platforms. This has exemplified the need for banks and financial institutions to be inclusive to their customers and to forward digital capabilities in the banking scene.

Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), one of Thailand’s leading banks, led by Digital Banking Division or DBank, aims to improve financial inclusion for Thais through its steps in enhancing financial well-being, enabling them to become qualified for useful and affordable financial solutions.

Customers can be assisted by Just4U, a solution within the SCB ecosystem that acts as a personal AI financial assistant, helping them to establish financial well-being. Just4U has adopted AI to analyse customers' transactional data, discover customer insights, and provide personalised digital banking solutions and AI recommendations, nudging customers to shape their financial habits so that they will always stay on track.

Originally an effortless spending tracker on the SCB Easy App, Just4U now has three key functions, which include auto-spending categorisation, auto-bill reminder, and nudging insights. 

Through the auto-spending categorisation, Just4U’s AI helps track all customers' spending via SCB deposit accounts, debit cards, and credit cards automatically. The function not only enhances the overall categorisation accuracy but also delivers personalised categorisation tailored to the customers’ specific spending lifestyles.

Customers can comprehensively see where their money goes, be aware if they are overspending, identify their financial pitfalls, reshape their spending habits, and then develop a better money allocation plan through the function.

Meanwhile, the auto-bill reminder helps customers manage their bill payments effortlessly. The AI learns the customer's bill payment pattern on the SCB EASY app and gives them a payment reminder on the upcoming bill on the common payment date.

The nudging insights, on the other hand, is a personalised feature that enables customers to discover unmet insight, reshape financial behaviours, as well as be equipped with financial tips related to their financial profile and current circumstances, and gear toward financial well-being pathways.

Just4U’s AI innovation has learned customers' financial behaviours and contexts across SCB channels. Through AI functionalities, customers can eventually manage their day-to-day finances, have access to useful financial solutions, meet their life’s goals, and finally enhance their living standards. 

Meanwhile, another service that SCB has introduced to enable financial well-being is SCB Connect, which is originally a transaction notification service with sales messages sent directly to customers’ LINE applications.

The bank has transformed SCB Connect over the past few years to go beyond industry standards and empower customers with personalised insights. It has launched several initiatives to move toward this aspiration, supported by a deep understanding of customers’ needs through research.

Amongst the initiatives offered are a personalised insight that groups expenses into key categories and a reminder to customers about their investment performance and monthly spending, which will enable them to make appropriate adjustments whenever necessary. The new SCB Connect also features AI-driven bill reminders with seamless integration with the bank’s mobile banking application to help customers pay bills on time.

To drive further engagement, SCB Connect launched new services that aim to delight customers, such as e-donation and Songkran chatbot activities with seamless integration with SCB Easy and an e-tax system for deducting donation expenses.

The performance of these initiatives reflected the confidence of SCB’s customers in the new services. These innovations led to higher engagement, satisfaction, retention, and, eventually, higher revenue and brand recognition for the bank.

“SCB Connect believes that we are setting ourselves up to be the trusted companion of our customers toward their journey to better financial well-being whilst continuing to evolve with changing business environments to generate additional value both for our customers and the banks,” the company said.

The bank’s integration of the latest technologies into its products and services has earned recognition from the Asian Technology Excellence Awards, with SCB receiving the Thailand Technology Excellence Award for AI - Banking and the Thailand Technology Excellence Award for Connectivity - Banking awards.

The prestigious awards programme aims to recognise exceptional companies that are riding the digital disruption wave and leading the technological revolution and digital transformation journeys in their respective industries.

The Asian Technology Excellence Awards is presented by Asian Business Review. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2023 awards programme and be acclaimed for your company's outstanding retail initiatives, please contact Jane Patiag at [email protected].