Citi high-flyer to steer Grab on its digital bank path
Singapore
FORMER Citibank Singapore's head of retail banking Charles Wong is due to join the Grab-Singtel entity bidding for a digital full bank in Singapore, BT understands.
It is understood that Mr Wong, a veteran banker in the retail banking space, is likely to play a key role in the digital full bank if the Grab-Singtel consortium secures the licence.
Mr Wong, who is in his 40s, resigned from the US bank in February after more than 20 years at Citibank, where he spent nearly five years in his last role as head of retail banking at Citibank Singapore.
He was credited for bringing about a strong turnaround of the business, leading the unit to deliver consistent double-digit growth.
Grab Holdings and Singtel have applied for a digital full bank licence, with Grab holding a 60 per cent stake in the proposed consortium, and the telco giant holding 40 per cent. Both partners see financial services as a natural extension of their core businesses, senior executives from Grab and Singtel told BT in December.
Grab itself has already made key hires to ramp up its push into financial services. It earlier hired a former veteran from investment powerhouse BlackRock, Philip Chew, to run Grab's investment and new businesses unit.
Grab has also hired Leslie Teo, former GIC chief economist, to head its data science team, with the aim of looking at how to better price financial products.
It told BT in November that it is moving to tap the trillion-dollar wealth market across South-east Asia by offering low-cost investment products.
The company will, from the first half of this year, offer a handful of cash products - that is, money-market funds - here, with more complex products to follow.
Grab has a user base of some 166 million across the region, and operates the dominant wallet in Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, it told BT in November.
It has also rolled out micro-insurance products, and an undisclosed number of loans to several small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore alone via its joint venture with Japanese financial services group Credit Saison.
The fintech has not disclosed the size of its SME loan book in Singapore, or a target size for its SME financing business.
Singtel - which expects to wield substantial influence even with a 40 per cent stake in the consortium - also has a unique benefit that it can bring to the table: It should be able to bring cyber security expertise via its cyber security unit to its banking business.
Singtel is Singapore's largest telco, though most of its earnings are derived from foreign countries. It has a customer base of more than 700 million across the region, including in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia.
Both Grab and Singtel have not declared their regional ambitions for digital banking, saying it was "too early".
But the new digital full bank in Singapore proposed by Grab and Singtel will shy from cash burn, while driving down the cost to target those deemed "underbanked" even in this mature market, they had said.
Other applicants for the digital full bank include Shopee's parent Sea Ltd, a consortium led by gaming company Razer that includes founders of Sheng Siong as partners, and a six-member consortium led by OSIM founder Ron Sim's private investment vehicle V3 Group and partnered by stored-value card operator EZ-Link.
Up to two successful applicants for the digital full bank in Singapore will be announced in the middle of this year.
