More women in tech, increasing digital adoption among key trends: UOB’s Choo Wan Sim

HAVING spent most of her banking career in the payments space, Choo Wan Sim’s ability to use data has helped her bring new perspectives to the table when it comes to running UOB’s digital bank.

“Coming from cards to digital banking, I got the team to make sure that a lot of their business decisions are backed by data,” said Choo, who is head of UOB TMRW Digital. “Numbers tell a lot of things, and how you interpret them will affect your decision.” (*See amendment note)

Choo shared that the transition from cards and payments to heading UOB’s digital banking business was a challenge.

But, describing herself as “tenacious”, she noted that people will be able to move along with trends as long as one has the hunger to learn. “Never say never; always believe that change will come about and in order to be able to adapt to change, you have to learn,” she said.

Here are some excerpts from her conversation with The Business Times:

How did you end up in your role?

I studied accountancy in university, but I realised that auditing or accounting was not my cup of tea. I started to look at marketing roles, because my interest lies in curating products, understanding customers’ needs and knowing what is suitable for them.

I landed a marketing role in a financial institution in the space of cards and payments, and since then I’ve been a payments specialist for 20 years.

Two years ago, an opportunity arose in UOB TMRW. The role evolved from being very tech-focused, to also having this business element on how we should run a digital bank. This really appealed to me because it taps my experiences and my skill set to commercialise digital products.

Fast forward two years, what my team and I do now is formulate digital strategy, look at acquiring customers digitally, engage them, and help them with digital payments.

What is a key trend that you see in your area?

The first trend is having more women in the tech space, which pushes towards innovation.

Having diversification – not just in gender, but also in race or nationality – helps drive innovation, because when different people come together, different mindsets will propel each other to think differently and out of the box.

Other trends I see post-Covid are in digital adoption. Firstly, it is the comfort level of scanning a QR code, because of TraceTogether. We actually see that QR payments have jumped by nine times.

The second trend is in the space of e-commerce, where now S$1 in every S$2 spent is actually on e-commerce. We also have more digitally enabled customers.

How does this affect your role?

I feel that females bring a very different perspective to the table. Having a good representation ensures that the customised solution we come up with meets the end consumer.

With increasing digital adoption and demand from our customers to have a more seamless, personalised solution, there is also increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) solutions.

We make use of digital footprints, collect data, and use AI and ML to serve out a very personalised experience.

Another area that is different is in terms of solutions. As we understand our customer a lot more, the bank cross-sells products that we think benefits you, instead of what it wants to sell. And we see the results from doing so: for example, we see a 50 per cent improvement in pick-up rate.

Amendment note: UOB has clarified that Choo’s role is head of UOB TMRW Digital.