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Banking in Myanmar in the palm of your hand
Banking in Myanmar in the palm of your hand Written by Jennifer Johnson Produced by Mariana Lee
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With Myanmar’s unprecedented adoption of the smartphone, Yoma Bank aims to provide clients with customer-focussed solutions they can access outside the branch network
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s emerging markets go, Myanmar is in a unique position. Just five years ago, a civilian government came to power, with the shift swiftly opening the country up to global markets and trade. This in turn presented a series of diverse challenges for the financial sector – the most pressing of which is to rapidly modernise in order to meet the needs of Myanmar’s people. With entry of two foreign telcos, growth in the Burmese mobile phone market has reached unprecedented levels, with smartphone penetration now exceeding 70 percent. The
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widespread availability of internetenabled phones is disrupting the provision of traditional banking services, with users increasingly demanding mobile alternatives. Yoma Bank, one of Myanmar’s largest commercial banks, is working to develop customerdriven solutions that will allow smartphone users to access financial services with the tap of a touchscreen. Since it was founded in 1993, Yoma Bank has led the drive toward innovation in Myanmar’s banking sector. It was
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the first bank in the country to adopt a computerised accounting system and wireless banking communications. Now, it is readying its customer offering to compete in the mobile world. “Traditional infrastructure in Myanmar is poor, but telephony is strong,” explains Serge Pun, Executive Chairman of Yoma Bank. “Myanmar has already launched 4G. It’s pretty remarkable that the bulk of country has gone from never having a phone of any sort to having 4G in a matter of 24 months.” As it stands, customer services in the country’s financial sector are constrained, with branches acting as the only channels of communication between account holders and their banks. However, branch opening hours are restricted from 9am to 3pm Monday to Friday, and this keeps many of the country’s working professionals from accessing financial services altogether. “Consumer banking is seriously constrained,” Hal Bosher, CEO of Yoma Bank, says. “People use banks as storage facilities for their savings. With the lack of a payments
Yoma Bank’s Executive Chairman, Serge Pun
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infrastructure, they don’t use accounts the country. In parallel the bank as enablers of their day to day lives is investing in technology so that as they do in other markets.” customers can access banking Payment architecture is services through the smartphone. underdeveloped, with many retailers inequipped to handle card Making waves transactions. According to Bosher, this There are only a handful of mobile renders existing financial institutions operators providing services in “of little use” to the average Myanmar today, including the Burmese consumer. Banks state-owned Myanmar Post operating under the and Telecommunications current paradigm (MPT), Qatar’s Ooredo primarily channel credit and Norway’s Telenor. from one community Yoma Bank joined forces to another via secured with the latter to create a lending. This creates Wave Money, a channel Number of a twofold dilemma: that allows users to employees at “One: consumers are transfer money using Yoma Bank limited to Myanmar’s their smartphone or bank branches a local Wave Shop which number roughly agent. Inclusion is the 1500 today,” Bosher explains. ultimate aim of the Wave Money “Second: you can’t borrow money venture, with the convenience because you need to have physical of its operating model enabling collateral in order to access credit.” those without a bank account, Yoma Bank has addressed this or access to a branch, to problem through a partnership utilise financial services. with Telenor to launch Wave Money, Wave Money is available in a mobile money network with the form of an Android app, more than 4,000 agents across which can be downloaded
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• Payments Switching • ATM Acquiring • POS Payments • Mobile Payments • Card Issuing & Management • Loyalty, Transport, Retail • Microfinance • Risk & Fraud Management • Mobile & Internet Banking • eCommerce • National Payments Infrastructure
from the Google Play store, or with the help of one of the thousands of qualified agents across the country. If, for instance, a taxi driver in Mandalay wants to send money home to his family in a rural village, he can visit a local retailer to ‘wire’ the money to a Wave Money agent near them. If both parties have smartphones, he can simply carry out the transfer using the app.
customers to maximise the usefulness of their existing accounts. Bosher and his team wanted a readymade modernisation solution “right out of the box”. And leading financial software company Misys had just the technology they were looking for. The company’s FusionBanking Essence core banking solution is helping to transform customer experience at Yoma Bank, and bring the bank’s
“The question is, how do you really provide value to the customer so that they switch from cash to digital money, and use it?” – Serge Pun, Executive Chairman “The question is, how do you really provide value to the customer so that they switch from cash to digital money, and use it?” Yoma Bank’s Chairman asks. The digital branch Yoma Bank realised that in order to compete in both the foreign and domestic banking sectors, it would have to update its IT offering to allow
capabilities firmly into the digital age. “We had an [IT] system which we designed ourselves, but it was very rudimentary,” Bosher says. “This is a quantum leap for us in terms of acquiring a system of this worth.” Misys’ FusionBanking Essence comes equipped with a mobile and online banking system, enabling Yoma Bank to respond to the increasingly mobile needs of its customers. “The system’s functionality
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“It’s pretty remarkable that the country has gone from never having a phone of any sort to having 4G in a matter of 24 months” – Serge Pun, Executive Chairman
IT and Digital Team - Left to Right: Mike Phone Myint - Head of IT, Kyaw Soe Linn - Chief Technology Officer, Soe Hla Win - Head of Digital Channels
Yoma Bank’s Special Advisor to Chairman and CEO, Hal Bosher
allows us to develop a lot of the digital product,” Bosher says. He recalls that, prior to the firm’s IT overhaul, a lack of processing power limited what they were able to offer customers: “We had to keep the product very simple and very non-bespoke because we just didn’t have the functionality to provide people a more tailored offering.” The bank’s ability to analyse the behaviours of its customers has also been enhanced by its newlyacquired IT update. The ‘core system’ supplied by Misys allows Yoma to ‘slice and dice’ customer data. The more it understands the actions of customers, the more it will be able to tailor its services. The journey to get customers better service through more channels has just begun for Yoma Bank. The next two years will be crucial for the organisation, as it evaluates the success of its existing strategy and plans next steps. Pun is conscious of not introducing technologies which outpace customer demand. “It’s about calibrating the products to the needs of the user and that means a lot of listening,” he says. At the end of the day, technology simply enables better services. And at the heart of good customer service is an effective corporate ethos — especially in rapidly-developing countries like Myanmar. Pun emphasises excellent corporate governance “with a lot of transparency”; “That is really an anchor and I believe that really is what underpins everything that we do.”
1993 The year that Yoma Bank was founded
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Level 8, Office Tower 2, 192 Kabar Aye Pagoda Road, Bahan Township, Yangon. Myanmar. +95 1 9345 255 info@yomabank.com www.yomabank.com