Sea Group Reportedly Interested in Taking Minority Shares in HiBank

Internet giant Sea Group is reportedly interested in taking a minority stake in HiBank, a digital bank owned by PT Bank Negara Indonesia Tbk (IDX: BBNI), in the early second quarter of 2024. According to reports Deal Street Asia, The share ownership offered by BNI to Sea Group is around 10% -15%.

In the news DailySocial.id Previously, Sea Group still had status as strategic partner BNI is involved in preparing the business model and developing technology infrastructure at HiBank. Meanwhile, the Sea Group and BNI partnership was announced two years ago.

Before-rebranding, HiBank was previously called Bank Mayora which was acquired by BNI in 2021. Currently, BNI is the controlling shareholder of HiBank with ownership of 63,92%.

It is not yet certain about the direction of the strategic partnership between the two, but taking a minority stake allows Sea to expand its segment bankingafter establishing digital bank SeaBank in 2021.

It is known that HiBank is transforming into a digital bank that prioritizes the MSME segment in Indonesia. Application banking ClickMayora was observed to have 100K+ downloads on the Play Store.

Meanwhile, SeaBank, the result of the acquisition from Bank Welfare Economics (BKE), has a retail customer segment, which is embedded in the service E-commerce Shopee. This allows Shopee users to open SeaBank accounts, make transactions, and manage finances in one application.