LINE BK, the first Social Banking service provider in Thailand, revealed their operating results for the year 2021, showing excellent growth. Responding to the trend of Thai people who are more open-minded to social banking services, LINE BK found that after launching the services for 1 year the total number of users on the platform has exceeded 3.9 million. In 2022, LINE BK prepares to continue penetrating the market to overcome challenges, highlighting three main strategies focused on accessing customers to provide better and wider developing services to meet financial needs more conveniently, and launching new products to increase the versatility of financial services. LINE BK is ready to launch a new campaign to expand customer groups in Bangkok and other provinces to increase awareness about LINE BK and reach more customers in line with the concept of “Banking in your Hand”.

Despite the challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic situation in 2021, LINE BK was still able to move forward as planned. In addition to having more than 3.9 million users, LINE BK's services have also received a lot of attention. It can be seen from the activation data of four main services, namely 4.5 million deposit accounts, over 100,000 special savings accounts, 2 million debit cards, and over 500,000 lending accounts, totaling over 27 billion baht.

Tana Pothikamjorn, Chief Executive Officer of KASIKORN LINE said, “2022 will continue to be a challenging year for LINE BK to deliver a good financial experience for Thai people. We are striving to develop services to be more efficient, convenient, safe and cover all the needs of customers in line with the concept of ‘Banking in Your Hand'. In addition to our four main services, including deposit accounts, special interest savings accounts, debit cards and lending line services, the company has also prepared a plan to collaborate with new partners to launch other services to strengthen the business. We want to cover the needs of customers as well as to see a new marketing campaign to add fun and color to the lending service.”

However, LINE BK's key strategy in 2022 is to strengthen core business, both in terms of credit services and banking and financial transaction services. It is divided into 3 strategies as follows:

Reach wider target audience in more effective way

We will focus on reaching customers both qualitatively and quantitatively by improving the application process for opening an account to make it more convenient and faster. We are including the risk assessment process for credit approval that has an AI system for intelligent data analysis. The system will consider information accurately to reach more customers.

In addition, there will be marketing focusing on reaching new target groups, especially mass markets in the provinces. It will also focus on the main customer groups like last year, namely salaried employees, including independent professional groups and groups of merchants who do not have a regular income, etc. Customers will see a large LINE BK campaign that will draw attention, helping us to reach and communicate more directly to customers.

Develop services to meet usage and lifestyle needs.

It will be developed from the strength of LINE BK in the LINE application to make money transfers in chat more convenient. It includes the development of a money transfer QR feature to support the behavior of consumers who often use the LINE application to scan QR codes in their daily lives.

Launch new services to increase the completeness of financial services.

Prepare to launch new services that are designed to meet the needs of Social Banking with complete financial services. There are plans to launch these new services in the middle of this year.

Tana concluded that, “This year, we will see a clearer picture of LINE BK's social banking presence by focusing on integrating financial services with LINE channels, which is the main chat app used by Thai people. Especially in this Covid era, LINE BK will strive to develop and provide a good experience for Thai people. As for the original service, we will develop it to be more intimate and personalized. Finances should be easy and fluid, just like picking up your phone to use social media. It is important to increase the opportunity for many Thai people who have difficult access to funding to make it easier and more secure to request credit in the system, reinforcing the concept of ‘Banking in your Hand’.