Techcombank launches AI-powered banking

Techcombank's first Keynote event, titled "Pioneering Innovation: Reaching for New Heights," showcased the bank's most innovative new solutions for individual, business, and corporate customers and highlighted how it is harnessing the power of data and AI to create meaningful experiences for customers and deliver unprecedented growth for Techcombank.

Kicking off the event, CEO Jens Lottner highlighted the investment made by Techcombank over the first three years of its 2021–2025 transformation plan to create a number of first-in-the-market innovations.

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

This puts it 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.

Lottner said that this year the bank has accelerated its drive towards leveraging digital platforms, new data, and AI capabilities, creating more hyper-personalized experiences for customers.

"We are now redefining banking in Vietnam with our product innovations and personalized experiences," said Lottner.

CEO Jens Lottner speaking at the event. Photo courtesy of Techcombank

The bank's application of technology, its customer-centric operation, and strong operational and financial performance have been recognized by prestigious international awards over the past year.

It was named "Best Bank in Vietnam 2024" by the international financial publications Global Finance and Finance Asia and voted the number one bank in Vietnam by customers in a survey by Forbes Magazine.

Redefining banking with personalized experiences

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

Through its mobile app, the bank is helping customers improve their financial awareness by providing personalized financial management advice and insights, enabling customers to enjoy their money and save for the future.

Techcombank has delivered over 52 million personalized pieces of financial advice to more than 4 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 personalized insights in 2023.

Its new loyalty ecosystem offers rewards and experiences tailored to individual customers’s preferences and lifestyles.

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

Investors and guests visit the experience booth. Photo courtesy of Techcombank

Currently, the bank has over 8.5 million customers in its loyalty ecosystem, with around 4 million customers actively earning points each month.

Techcombank is driving tangible business value from the personalization of its customer experiences. The conversion rate for credit card acquisition increased by up to 21%, and the active rate for new bank customers (NTB) increased by 13%.

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 corporations to take a more holistic and integrated 360-degree 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, an attractive loyalty ecosystem, and beyond banking services to help manage and grow their businesses.

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

Speakers participated in the panel discussion at the event. Photo courtesy of Techcombank

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 the "Wealthtech strategy."

Minh said TCBS has developed the TCInvest super app and a suite of innovative digital-led wealth management solutions.

TCBS now serves around 1 million customers, holds the "#1 spot" in terms of market share among bank-owned equity brokerages on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange, and is in the top 3 overall.

In Q1 2024, 31,187 customers opened a new TCBS account through the TCInvest app, and the app 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% online and at the touch of a button.

TCBS has delivered strong profit growth of approximately 40% 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 as it transforms into a bank powered by data and AI.

Santhosh Mahendiran, Techcombank’s Chief Data and Analytics Officer, said that the bank’s use of advanced data analytics, generative AI, and large language models (LLMs) underpins its ability to provide new personalized customer experiences to millions of individual customers.

The bank’s integrated data in the "data lake" comes from over 50 of the bank’s systems and is linked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) data analytics capabilities to create a bank-wide "data brain."

This is linked to its cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform that provides a centralized 360-degree 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 these data resources in actual operation, an internally developed AI-empowered program named LACE provides the bank's relationship managers (RMs) 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 Techcombank's digital transformation and the creation of new personalized 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.

Nguyen Xuan Minh, Chairman of TCBS, giving speech at the event. Photo courtesy of Techcombank

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

According to Simon Dale, Vice President, Adobe Asia, 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," he said.

Sujith Abraham, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Salesforce ASEAN, also expressed that they 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," he said.

In bringing the first ever Techcombank Keynote to a close, Jens Lottner said that their 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," Abraham said.