INTERVIEW: BANK AGRO
Bank Raya zones in on gig economy By 2025, the Indonesian neobank expects 74.81 million gig workers in the country.
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ank BRI Agro has shed its roots as an agribusinessfocused finance platform and rebranded as Bank Raya, looking to take flight as a fully-fledged digitalonly bank in Indonesia. In particular, the bank focuses on the 46 million Indonesians who count themselves as part of the local gig economy. This number is expected to reach 74.81 million by 2025, and to expand to a market size of US$314b, the bank said. Whilst many Indonesians held side jobs even before the pandemic, the gig economy truly flourished at the height of this global crisis as mass layoffs pushed workers to explore new avenues of income in jobs that are traditionally seen as side work, Bank Raya observed. Plans are already in motion. In May, Bank Raya appointed Kaspar Situmorang, former division head of Digital Bank Development & Operations at Bank BRI, as its CEO to lead its transformation into a full-fledged digital bank. Earlier, the bank also secured regulatory approval, clinching the license to operate as a digital lending platform. Asian Banking & Finance chats with Situmorang to learn more about Bank Raya’s ambitions of becoming the biggest digital bank in Indonesia and why they have decided to focus on the gig economy. Before becoming the CEO of Bank Raya, who is Kaspar Situmorang? Can you give a brief background of your experiences in fintech and digital bank development? For the past few years, I have been assigned to specific fintech positions with banks. Since working with PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Persero) Tbk, I have served as the executive vice president of the Digital Center of Excellence for two years. After that, I moved to the role of executive vice president of Digital Banking Development and Operations, where I was in charge of the whole digitalisation of the BRI groups. Since 2019, I have also been fulfilling roles for BRI Venture Capital. Back in 2018, I started building a new company by the name of BRI Venture Capital. We invested in around 10 fintech firms over a span of two years. One of which is by the name of Agia, which was established in 2018. I was also a part of the Board of Commissioners for the past two years, until April. As you can see I have worked in a wide range of fintech, banking, and, in particular, digital banking roles for the past four years. One of the major tasks in store for you is to transform Bank Raya into a fully digital bank. Can you give us a rundown on how you plan to lead Bank Raya through this transformation? We have to transform the cultures and also the digitals [of 12 ASIAN BANKING AND FINANCE | Q4 2021
Kaspar Situmorang, CEO, Bank Agro
46m Indonesians are part of the local gig economy. This number will reach 74.81m by 2025
the bank]. If you’re using the balanced scorecard models: flip the human capital, flip the business process, and then flip the customers, and then you will get the reflections in the form of a new kind of financial gain. By doing this, we accelerate the journey to becoming the best digital bank in Indonesia. For the past few years, we have already been investing in Bank Raya. The bank is pretty much ready because we have implemented the application for digital lending, Penang, which is one of the first in Indonesia, back in 2019. The way we plan to transform it is threefold. The first one is digital, the second part is to digitise. For the third one, we are doing a revamp of the bank as well. So on the digital side, we are trying to amplify the development of super apps within the organisation and also we are trying to simplify the business process to become fully digital, whether it’s for digital lending to micro-businesses, lending to retail customers, and even lending to the consumer side. On the digitising part, that’s where we are streamlining all the business processes. For example, in loan originations until disbursement and repayment, we try to streamline the processes, so it becomes a new standard. Here, we are also trying to avoid operational risks.
