KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 19 — CIMB Group’s head of consumer banking Samir Gupta said the bank is aiming to use its financial technology (fintech) strategy to reinforce its position as a leading player in the consumer banking sector.

The bank became the first to receive Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) regulatory sandbox approval for e-KYC (know-your-customer), a paperless and electronic method of verifying customer identity.

Sandboxing is the term where applications are intentionally restricted to their own environments, generally for security and reliability reasons.

"Our digital strategy as a bank revolves around bringing together the stability, reputation and customer base of a bank coupled with the dynamism, agility and speed of a fintech,” Gupta said in an interview.

WIth the e-KYC, he said the bank would strengthen its partnership with fintech companies.

The aim is to drive the institution’s offering with a wider range of innovative products.

"This combination of the agility and speed of fintech can create a compelling and game-changing proposition for consumers,” said Gupta in email responses to Malay Mail.

CIMB FinTech is leading the bank’s digital strategy for implementation across the region, Gupta said.

The group recorded its best ever quarterly operating income of RM4.42 billion in the third quarter of 2017, and generated 26.0 per cent year-on-year growth in net profit for nine months of 2017.

The group’s consumer banking franchise in Malaysia and Thailand as well as investment and corporate banking activities contributed to the results for the quarter.

CIMB is also revamping the natural language processing capabilities of the Enhanced Virtual Assistant (EVA) mobile banking application launched in December 2016.

"The enhancements will enable EVA to hold a natural conversation in English, as well as in Bahasa Malaysia later in 2018,” he said.

The app was recently updated to offer spending analysis to allow users to track their usage patterns across various instruments.

This is the first step towards more enhancements and features in 2018 to provide real-time data and insights for customers, and to let CIMB personalise recommendations of retail offers and discounts in real time via predictive modelling.

He said the digital banking landscape has already been reshaped by high and growing mobile usage, which reached 45 per cent of transactions in 2017.

"Although we have digitalised and added analytics and robotics to our consumer banking business, the human touch still remains as part of CIMB’s customer value proposition.

"For example, customers can still choose to walk into a branch or speak to us via our contact centre. Our Relationship Managers are also on hand to assist CIMB Preferred customers with their banking needs,” he said.

He also said that at CIMB, customer experience is one of the pivotal areas of the Group’s T18 strategy.

Customer service has been identified as the key success factor to the winning, growing and retaining of customers in the banking industry.

"Various enhancements have been put in place to improve our customers’ journey with us.

One of the key areas we’re looking at is improving turnaround time. Customers today want things done quickly and conveniently,” he said.

"For example, with straight-through-processing for our mortgage applications, customers will receive instant decisions on their mortgage eligibility,” he said.