BANKING TECHNOLOGY: BANK BRI
BRIBrain stores, processes, and consolidates all information from various sources. It is the brain behind BRI’s ‘phygital’ strategy
BRI employs AI ‘brain’ to merge its digital and physical presence BRIBrain has helped the bank reduce loan application times from 2 weeks to 2 minutes.
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fter brilliantly closing 2021 with a $2.2b (IDR 32.22t) net profit, translating to a 75.53% year-on-year growth, Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) can say that it has formulated an ideal strategy to remain prominent in the midst of challenges and trends in the banking world that continues to develop. The answer is in its artificial intelligence (AI) system called BRIBrain. BRIBrain was developed to store, process, and consolidate all information from various sources. It is the brain behind the bank’s ‘phygital’ strategy. “Combining physical and digital presence is BRI’s answer to meet the expectations of the public, some of whom prefer to transact digitally and others feel more comfortable and safe to meet face-to-face with bank officers,” said BRI’s Director of Digital and Information Technology, Indra Utoyo, in an
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exclusive interview with Asian Banking & Finance. Big data for a hybrid bank To maintain performance and modernise its services, BRI allocates 3% of revenue for technology investment or 5% to 7% of costs. “Currently we are entering an era where data analytics, software, design, cyber security, and user interface/user experience play very important roles,” Indra said. “We, as an old bank, need technology that is truly a game-changer in this competition, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and cloud.” This is the reason why the bank integrated BRIBrain particularly in four of the bank’s processes that boost both of the bank’s physical and digital capabilities. First is in the BRILink Score, the scoring system for the assessment of the BRILink Agents. Through
BRI, as an old bank, needs tech that is truly a gamechanger in this competition
this system, the 504,000 BRILink Agents throughout Indonesia are encouraged to help in improving the bank’s O2O or Online-to-Offline services, especially for people in the regions, through financial inclusion and literacy. BRILink Agents’ transaction volumes reached a total of $76.74b (IDR 1,143.81t) in 2021. They were also able to raise low-cost funds (CASA) of $1.3b (IDR 19.38t) and fee-based income (FBI) of $89.9m (IDR 1.34t). Second, BRIBrain makes the credit scoring process for loans faster and more accurate. The machine learning approach makes the creditworthiness of prospective debtors faster, with minimal risk, so that approval and disbursement of loans can be done instantly, and the risk of bad credit can be minimised. “In terms of loan financing, where, previously, the process could
