Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank) has started a new era of AI-powered banking at its inaugural Techcombank Keynote event, as the lender accelerates its journey to become a leading bank in Vietnam with innovative digital and data-led solutions for customers, bringing the Vietnamese banking sector to global standards.

Techcombank’s first-ever Keynote event, titled ‘Pioneering Innovation: Reaching for New Heights,’ was held in Hanoi on June 28, the bank said in a press release.

The event showcased Techcombank’s most innovative new solutions for individual, business, and corporate customers and highlighted how the bank is harnessing the power of data and AI to create meaningful experiences for clients and deliver unprecedented growth for the bank.

Kicking off the event, CEO Jens Lottner highlighted the investment made by Techcombank over the first three years of its 2021-25 transformation plan in digital, data, and talent spheres.

This investment has allowed the bank to create substantial value for customers and release a number of first-in-the-market innovations.

As of today, Techcombank has broadly applied data analysis and AI across the bank and most of its major systems have been transitioned to the cloud.

This puts the lender around three years ahead of its competitors in Vietnam and is enabling the bank to harness the power of data and AI in order to drive unique business outcomes and customer centricity.

“This year we have accelerated our drive toward leveraging our digital platforms and new data and AI capabilities to create more hyper-personalized experiences for our customers, and grow our business faster and more profitably than any other bank in Vietnam. We are now redefining banking in Vietnam with our product innovations and personalized experiences,” said Lottner.

Techcombank’s application of technology, customer centricity, and strong operational and financial performance have been recognized by numerous prestigious international awards over the past 12 months.

It has been named ‘Best Bank in Vietnam 2024’ by international financial publications Global Finance and Finance Asia, and has been voted the #1 bank in Vietnam by customers in a Forbes Magazine survey.

Redefining banking with hyper-personalized experiences

During the Techcombank Keynote, Pranav Seth, its chief digital officer, highlighted the bank’s newest innovations that were helping to create hyper-personalized experiences for customers through its award-winning digital banking platforms.

Through the Techcombank Mobile app, the bank is helping customers improve their financial awareness by providing bespoke financial management advice and insights, enabling them to enjoy their money and save for the future.

Techcombank has already delivered over 52 million tailor-made pieces of financial advice to more than four million customers since the experience was launched.

The bank’s use of AI and machine learning has been a game changer, delivering more than 100 million customized insight views in 2023.

Techcombank’s new loyalty ecosystem offers rewards and experiences tailored to the individual customer’s preferences and lifestyles.

It is one of the largest and most diverse loyalty programs in the Vietnamese banking industry, encompassing over 19,000 points of sale with more than 300 brands, where customers can earn reward points.

Currently, the bank has upwards of 8.5 million customers in its loyalty ecosystem, with around four million customers actively earning points each month.

The lender is already driving tangible business value from the personalization of its customer experiences, for example:

* 700-percent conversion uplift for select marketing campaigns

* Cross selling: conversion rate for credit card acquisition increased by up to 21 percent

* Active rate for new to bank customers (NTB) rose by 13 percent

Innovative solutions to cater to all customers’ needs

Phung Quang Hung, head of corporate and institutional banking group, introduced C-Cash, a first-of-its-kind corporate treasury management solution, in partnership with Kyriba.

Initially piloted in 2023, C-Cash is being rolled out to all corporate customers in 2024 and is designed to uplift their treasury management to a world-class level.

It enables corporates to take a more holistic and integrated 360˚ view of their financial positions across multiple bank accounts and even multiple banks.

C-Cash financial data is integrated and analyzed centrally to help CFOs make timely and optimal decisions, enhance efficiency, optimize financial costs and yield, and improve working capital.

Nguyen Anh Tuan, chief retail banking group officer, highlighted the bank’s all-in-one banking solution for merchant customers called Techcombank Merchant.

This holistic suite of offerings is designed to empower merchants to run and grow their businesses by providing:

* All-in-one smart payment acceptance

* Auto-Earning to earn more from surplus cash

* Easy access to credit for both business and personal needs

* Attractive loyalty ecosystem

* Beyond banking services to help manage and grow their business

Over 600,000 merchants now use Techcombank’s merchant solutions, and this has contributed to a 20-percent increase in the bank’s CASA balances.

Pioneering differentiated wealth solutions

Nguyen Xuan Minh, chairman of Techcom Securities (TCBS), explained how TCBS has become the leading securities company in Vietnam by pioneering ‘Wealthtech strategy.’

Pursuant to this strategy, TCBS has developed the TCInvest super app and a suite of innovative digital-led wealth management solutions.

Today TCBS serves around one million customers, holds the leading spot in terms of market share among bank-owned equity brokerages on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, and stands in the top three overall.

In Q1 2024, 31,187 customers opened a new TCBS account through the TCInvest app, which averaged over 14.8 million visits each month.

Through the TCInvest app, customers can easily and securely trade securities, bonds, funds, derivatives, and other asset classes 100 percent online and at the touch of a button.

TCBS has delivered strong profit growth of approximately 40 percent per annum between 2013 and 2023, while operating costs have been increasingly optimized thanks to investment in the technology infrastructure.

Harnessing the power of data and AI

Supported by a workforce that includes over 1,800 data scientists, analysts, engineers and IT-related staff, Techcombank is setting the standard and defining the future of banking by offering meaningful and engaging experiences to customers as it transforms into a bank powered by data and AI.

Santhosh Mahendiran, Techcombank’s chief data & analytics officer, reminded that the bank’s use of advanced data analytics, generative AI, and large language models (LLMs) underpin its ability to provide new personalized customer experiences to millions of individual customers.

The bank has integrated data from over 50 of its systems into a 'data lake' and linked it with Amazon Web Services' (AWS) data analytics capabilities to create a bank-wide 'data brain.’

This data brain is linked to its cloud-based customer relationship management platform that provides a centralized 360˚ view of all customer information to empower relationship managers and ensure seamless online and offline customer journeys.

Sitting on top of the data brain and exploiting the data coming from more than 1,000 customer attributes, Techcombank operates 45 advanced machine learning models which allow it to predict and meet the needs of its customers with remarkable precision.

Applying this data resource in actual operation, an internally developed AI-empowered program named LACE provides the bank’s relationship managers with accurate and enriched AI insights and scores so that they may have smarter lead allocation and achieve higher productivity.

Techcombank is also experimenting with how generative AI can build the next level of innovation for itself and its customers.

Partnerships with some of the world’s leading technology companies – Adobe, AWS, Kyriba, and Salesforce – are playing a crucial role in the bank’s digital transformation and the creation of tailor-made new customer experiences.

For example, Techcombank is exploring with AWS how to increase developers’ productivity through generative AI-enabled services such as Amazon Q.

This is in addition to three newly-built applications using Amazon Bedrock to improve customer experiences already deployed today.

"AWS is proud to be part of Techcombank's digital transformation journey, enabling the bank to access the services, AI capabilities, infrastructure, and robust security they need to leverage generative AI at scale and drive innovation, whilst remaining cost-effective,” said Eric Yeo, Vietnam country manager, AWS.

Simon Dale, vice-president, Adobe Asia said, “Today's banking customers demand seamless, tailored experiences across multiple touchpoints, whether digital or in-branch. Adobe is proud to be Techcombank's partner since 2022, empowering them to deliver hyper-personalized banking experiences in real-time through our Adobe Experience Cloud and Real-Time Customer Data Platform.”

“We are thrilled to partner with Techcombank on its transformation journey with data and AI to better serve its customers and build an empowered workforce. Unified company data from across systems is critical for AI to deliver trusted and meaningful outputs that can be actioned,” said Sujith Abraham, senior vice-president and general manager, Salesforce ASEAN.

Bringing the first-ever Techcombank Keynote to a close, CEO Lottner said, “Our unique combination of advanced data capabilities, state-of-the-art digital infrastructure, and top-tier talent enables a growth strategy that is very hard to replicate. With the strong support of our partners and shareholders, we have built one of the best banking platforms in Asia. We are now ready to go to the next level, to compete and win over customers to realize our vision, Change Banking, Change Lives.”

Techcombank (ticker: TCB VN, HOSE) is one of the largest joint stock banks in Vietnam, and a leading bank in Asia, with a vision to Change Banking, Change Lives.

The bank pursues a proven customer-centric strategy in providing a broad range of retail and corporate banking solutions and services to help financially empower its customers.

Techcombank has 13.8 million retail and corporate customers, serving them through a market-leading digital banking platform and mobile app, together with an extensive network of transaction service outlets at locations across Vietnam.

The bank’s ecosystem approach, co-created through partnerships in multiple key economic sectors, adds further scale and differentiation in one of the fastest-growing markets in the world.

Techcombank is rated A+ by FiinRatings, Ba3 by Moody’s, and BB- by S&P, which is the highest among Vietnam’s joint stock commercial banks.

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