Big Data, computing and artificial intelligence (AI) are the decisive factors in the digital competition in all businesses. The banking industry also needs to take full advantage of the aforementioned resources to build a true digital bank. However, it seems that many banks are wasting digital data resources.
An audit firm of the Big Four group shared that they had their first round of testing with a small number of large Vietnamese enterprises on data collection, analysis and business development based on big data. The initial result is that it is difficult to expand data because the size of enterprises in Vietnam is not… really big, the data is almost none or nothing. Except for some leading retailers in the retail industry such as Mobile World, PNJ, Vietnam Airlines, and Vietjet, which were soon aware of the power of data collection.
Particularly for the banking sector, the representative of the evaluation programme is the group with large Big Data, but it is still quite messy, unorganised and unscreened. The bank has not had a team of experts to read the data and draw out the great values from this data source to develop valuable exploitation plans that promise to create such an effective source. “It is not that banks have not assessed the value of big data, but it has probably not been the right time yet,” the expert said.
Typically, in the process of cooperating to cross-sell products and services, such as bancassurance, it is clear that banks and insurance are aware of the value of the data file of customers and the ability to reach and expand the service to that data file. But launching applications, cooperating with e-wallets, and perfecting the models of Digital Banking and Application Programming Interface (API)… in the digital transformation race, put great pressure on banks.
Meanwhile, financial companies seem to be going in the opposite direction. Their starting point and purpose is from just one service, trying to attract as many customers as possible and creating big data from the basic service. After that, they expand a number of services until data file is large enough to set up an ecosystem. This is the path of ZaloPay’s journey, following the model of China’s Wechatpay and Alipay applications. However, they have a slightly different starting point in Vietnam so they haven’t really been successful.
In Vietnam, Grab is also a typical example of the path from a basic starting point to an ambitious financial ecosystem. Users may still remember their gradual steps in collecting customer information and data, from subscribing to customer service information, and connecting partners providing services in all areas through basic activities, such as travel, dining, commerce, living, and payment to send and transfer money (currently being held at Grabpay).
In other words, if banks have so far been providing three main core: Saving money, transferring money and accessing credit, Grab has been providing the first two steps (via Moca) and even in the future it can reach the third step lending (actually up to now it has been done with small transactions via deposit and value restriction).
And for the banks, it is necessary to be aware of the threats from Fintech and service companies like Grab, to cope and race with the innovation step that Fintech always leads for few years.
