How KASIKORNBANK and LINE work together to successfully embed finance into social apps

KASIKORN LINE launched LINE BK, the first “social banking” platform in Thailand, connecting Thailand’s most popular social media platform and one of Thailand’s leading banks together to create a ‘banking in your hand’ financial solution that lets customers easily transfer money, open savings accounts, apply for loans, and make payments conveniently via their mobile application. The inclusion of finance in social apps has seen a steep increase as mobile commerce (m-commerce) has significantly grown in recent years, with many Thai people using social media platforms extensively for communication, content sharing, and online interactions. Recognising this trend - KASIKORN LINE integrated finance-related features into their social app to cater to customers’ financial needs and capitalise on the existing user base, giving rise to LINE BK.

In this interview, we invited Dr. Thee Chanyaswad, Head of Data Analytics, KASIKORN LINE who manages the Data Science, Risk Modelling, Data Engineering and Data Management teams for KASIKORN LINE to tell us about how they are using AI-driven services to finance the underbanked with greater confidence, how they’ve overcome obstacles in the integration of AI and how they’re using AI to personalise and tailor financial recommendations customers.

Can you tell us about your background, responsibilities and what is your biggest achievement to date?

I’m currently heading the data and analytics functions at KASIKORN LINE. We are the company behind LINE BK -- Thailand’s first fully digital and social banking service. My responsibilities span the areas of business intelligence, data science, data engineering, risk modeling, model operations, data management, and data governance. One of my achievements so far would be to build KASIKORN LINE’s data and analytics capabilities – including both on the human capability and systems and platform – from the ground up within six months or so. As for my background, I received my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University with the research on data privacy and machine learning, so I have been fortunate to be able to incorporate the knowledge and experience from my research into the real-world functions.

What specific AI-driven features or services does KASIKORN LINE offer its customers to help them better manage their finances and make informed decisions about how best to manage their money?

One of our key AI-driven services is our credit scoring models. Being a joint venture between KASIKORNBANK – one of the largest banks in Thailand – and LINE – the major chat platform in Thailand – allows us to leverage the power of both financial and social data like never before. This enables us to better assess the credit capability of customers who might not have rich financial history that is typically required for traditional scoring models for accurate assessment. As a result, we are able to finance the underbanked with greater confidence.

Could you describe any challenges or obstacles you encountered during the integration of AI into your social banking platform, and how did you over them?

Not so much an obstacle, but I think one challenge we need to think about when deploying an AI solution is the so-called AI safety. It means to design and implement your AI solution in a way that it behaves as intended with minimal unintended consequences. It also involves ensuring that your AI solution is robust against various sources of uncertainties. To ensure AI safety, we start with a set of principles that we adhere to throughout the life cycle. These principles include pillars that ensure veracity, validity, robustness, privacy, and security of the AI used. More importantly, as the technology evolves rapidly, we need to keep up with it and keep our principles up to date as well. To put these principles into practice, we employed statistical techniques and tools that are available. More importantly, we need to regularly monitor AI services in use to ensure that they continue to operate in accordance with our principles.

How are you using AI to personalize and tailor financial recommendations or services to individual customers' needs and preferences?

Product recommendation is one of the earlier use cases of AI in the financial industry. We certainly use technology to help us gain better insight into our customer’s behavior, which in turn, helps us support them better with the right products or right services as required.

In what ways are AI and data analytics being used to make sure the security and privacy of customers' data is being upheld?

As mentioned in the challenge of using AI in the financial service, we believe that security and privacy are ones of the prime criteria of success in AI for financial industry. This starts with laying the right foundation through our AI safety principles. These principles have to cover how AI can be used securely, and how the data are concurrently protected. Privacy-enhancing technologies are also employed to help increase the level of privacy of the data subjects, such as data generalization, data masking, and noise addition.

Can you provide examples of cost-effective measures or approaches you have adopted to bridge the skills gap in data engineering and AI?

There are quite a number of measures that we have explored. I think each of them alone may not solve the whole problem, but together, I think they can be effective. One approach is to expand your tools and platforms, especially those that are open-sourced. This helps because it helps widen the pool of candidates who have the technical skillset you can build on. Another one is to really utilize the open-sourced knowledge tank online. Fortunately, as AI has become more prevalent, more high-quality materials are more available than ever before. Finally, and this is probably the most important one of all, we need to hire people with the right (1) growth mindset and (2) strong mathematical foundation. Hiring AI-ready candidates may be difficult and costly, but, combining with the available tools and sources of knowledge online, we can build capability with people who have high willingness and ability to learn. That’s why the right mindset (willingness to learn), and good mathematical background (ability to learn) are the critical characteristics we look for in our candidates.

What do you expect to get out of FinTech Connect 2023 and can you give us a sneak peek on what you will be sharing with the audience on the panel?

FinTech Connect 2023 will be a venue rich with people at the forefront of the industry in which AI has been explored and exploited extensively, so I think it will be a great venue to learn how the leaders in the industry are applying AI to their business. More importantly, I think it will be a great place to share our experiences with each other, which will only benefit the society. As for my session, I think my discussion will revolve around how AI has been more available than ever, and how, as an enterprise, we can grow our capability efficiently to catch up with the rapid development in the field.

Why is FinTech Connect 2023 an event not to be missed?

I believe FinTech Connect 2023 will be a good breeding ground for productive conversation around how technologies in general can be applied effectively in the financial industry. As the world is trending toward more digital than ever, this is certainly a must for any leader in the industry.

We’ve got an exclusive 1-for-1 offer* for you and your colleague to catch Dr. Thee Chanyaswad at Fintech Connect Leaders Asia 2023, happening at Raffles City Convention Centre Singapore, 29th August, 4:20 PM on "Case Study Presentation: Addressing the talent conundrum - How can banks remain cost effective whilst closing the digital skills gap in data engineering & AI?".

Your team would be able to meet him and exchange ideas and opinions in person, plus senior innovators from leading banks like Standard Chartered Bank, UOB, Deutsche Bank, DBS Singapore and more.

All you need to do is use the discount code “1FOR1” at checkout!

* Offer vaild for professionals from banks, insurance and asset and wealth asset management only