Bank Rakyat Indonesia: Engaging the Digital Customers of the Future

Bank BRI (Bank Rakyat Indonesia) was announced the Winner Of Celent Model Bank 2021 Award For Financial Inclusion.

This award goes to an initiative that fully digitizes the end-to-end process for a microloan, shrinking the time for the full process from two weeks to under two minutes, and forms the basis of a super app that significantly improves financial inclusion amongst millennials.

Celent often hears about banks’ plans to become digital, but most initiatives are only as digital as their least digital process. Often, this is because the bank is hampered by their need to include their existing technology stack in the process flow. In this instance, the bank had additional reasons for a fully digital solution. With a large, geographically dispersed population, mach of which is un- or underbanked, the only way to serve these customers was via a mobile-based solution.

The bank made the decision to construct a new, parallel technology stack, built around leading-edge technology, including AI, electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC), and APIs. As a result, the bank scored a number of country firsts, including first authorized digital lender, and authorised digital lending as a service provider.

In themselves, just a few of these aspects made Bank BRI a worthy winner; combined, the case was compelling. Furthermore, the products have been extremely successful with impressive amounts of credit given even before formally launching, and making a materially noticeable impact on levels of financial inclusion.

Reference: Celent’s Research 2021

See the full list of winners.

Bank BRI relies on OpenWay’s payment processing software

Bank Rakyat Indonesia is the largest microfinance institution in the world. As an OpenWay client it relies on the Way4 software solution for its ATM switching. Bank BRI runs its ATM network on Way4.