Following SCBX Group’s strategy of becoming a regional financial technology group, SCBX Group today announced a USD 50,000,000 indirect strategic investment in Bank Jasa Jakarta (BJJ), a licensed conventional Indonesian commercial bank through a WeLab-led consortium holding company, WeLab Sky Limited, who has joint control in BJJ together with PT Astra International Tbk (Astra) through its subsidiary PT Sedaya Multi Investama (Astra Financial), with plans to re-platform and re-launch it as an innovative digital bank.
The transaction marked Southeast Asia’s largest digital bank M&A transaction in 2022, illustrating the substantial commitment to invest in, and contribute to digitizing Indonesia’s banking industry. The strategic investment highlights the massive growth of digital banking business in Indonesia and heralds a new step in the digital banking revolution.
WeLab is a leading pan-Asian fintech platform with presence in Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Indonesia. It has developed market leadership with proven successful track record of launching a digital bank, WeLab Bank, in Hong Kong. Astra is one of Indonesia’s largest public companies with diversified business model creates synergies and opportunities across industry sectors including automotive, financial services, heavy equipment, mining construction and energy, agribusiness, infrastructure and logistics, information technology, and property.
The complementary strengths of the partners, including Astra’s solid business ecosystem and long-standing experience as well as and vast distribution network in Indonesia’s financial services sector together with WeLab’s know-how and technology in building and being an operator in digital banking, are highly synergistic and key success factors to propel BJJ’s digital transformation and into an innovative digital bank to serve the digital financial needs of Indonesians with accessible and innovative banking solutions.
Dr. Arak Sutivong, Deputy CEO, SCBX said that the group recognizes the growth opportunities in the digital banking business in Indonesia. The market is still at a nascent stage with no established presence and real established leader. It is a great opportunity to invest in a leading big data-enabled online digital bank lending platform in Indonesia to capture the great demand for digital banking services and country’s enormous underbanked and unbanked population with tech-savvy young consumers. It is SCBX Group’s strategic move to set a strong footprint in digital banking regionally.
