Genius Strategy to Compete Amid the Crowd of Digital Banking

In Indonesia, digital bank players are growing more and more in line with the trend of people's needs who crave practical financial services. As of June 2021 only, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) stated that there were already 14 digital banks present in Indonesia. Ten of them are already operational and the rest are still in the preparation process.

Jenius from Bank BTPN became a pioneer in digital banking which was introduced in 2016. At that time, the development of the Jenius application took 18 months of preparation and an investment of up to 500 billion rupiah.

Over the course of more than five years, Jenius has delivered various innovations and succeeded in attracting more than 3,7 million users spread across 514 districts/cities. DailySocial.id had the opportunity to talk with Waasi B. Sumintardja, Digital Banking Business Product Head of Bank BTPN about how Jenius remains relevant and competes with new players. Like what?

Many new players are a challenge as well as an opportunity

It is not easy to compete in the midst of the rapid flow of competition in the digital banking industry. Waasi also agrees, the emergence of new players is a challenge as well as an opportunity for Jenius. In terms of chance, the more players, the more people will educate about the concept of digital banking services.

“Back in 2016, we started to educate the concept of digital banking including its features and how to use it. With the emergence of new players, education about digital banking can reach more Indonesians in understanding this concept. In addition, the Indonesian people will also benefit because there are more choices and they can choose digital banking services according to their preferences," he said.

Even so, the challenges present become the spirit as well as the trigger for Jenius to continue to innovate and provide better services. To support this, from an internal perspective, Jenius routinely improves itself by implementing three factors to keep it relevant to the needs of the community.

Genius always puts factors first change in mindset, change in way of working, and change in culture. Namely applying a mindset that puts the customer at the top priority, implementing a sustainable product development process with the Minimum Valuable Product (MVP) method and feedback from users, as well as creating a highly creative and innovative culture by recruiting diverse talents from various industries and backgrounds with diverse mindsets.

Co-creation, collaboration, and expansion are Jenius' strategies to strengthen existence

In addition to the above, the service products offered by digital banks are believed to be the key to business success. As a leader in product development, Waasi also explained how Jenius was able to continue to grow and compete despite various challenges.

He said, there are 3 main aspects that are currently the focus, namely co-creation, collaboration, and expansion. Jenius was developed from the process of co-creation and collaboration with the community digitally savvy and various parties from across industries to build an integrated digital economy ecosystem. This spirit of co-creation and collaboration is what Jenius continues to promote to present innovative solutions that are relevant to the needs of the community digitally savvy in Indonesia.

“This is what Jenius's strength is to keep doing continuous improvement and listen to voices, input, and ideas from digitally savvy which are then transformed into revolutionary features and services on the Jenius application,” added Waasi to DailySocial.id

One of the ways in which this co-creation process is carried out is through the Jenius Co.Create platform, the community digitally savvy in the form of a website (co.create.id), articles, sharing rooms, workshops, and the annual Co.Creation Week event. Jenius Co.Create community members can directly provide input and ideas through the Co.Create forum and any ideas can be shared.vote by other members as an additional consideration for Jenius to develop features and services from the feedback.

Various features resulting from this co-creation process have also been presented by Jenius. Starting from making it easier to open an account, save, manage cash flow, to invest.

It is noted that, as of December 2021, more than 35.000 Co.Creators (members of the Jenius Co.Create community) are registered in cocreate.id. Various activities were also carried out, Jenius Co.Create has held 105 offline events and 110 online event which was attended by more than 8.000 participants even as far as Singapore, New Zealand, Oslo, and Japan.

As for expansion, Waasi explained that Jenius is oriented to expand its presence booth Digital banking genius and education. It is known that Jenius has expanded to various regions and cities in Indonesia. Throughout the first quarter of 2022 booth Jenius has been present in Cirebon, Tasikmalaya, Magelang, Pekanbaru, and Batam.

Continue to spread wings by helping to accelerate Indonesian MSMEs

The co-creation process also continues to be carried out by Jenius in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic that has hit the world. From the results of the co-creation, Jenius conducted a study entitled Digital Savvy Behavior During the Adaptation Period to New Habits. This study was conducted through an online survey method involving 307 communities digital savvy, aged 16–40 years, from April to May 2020. From the results of the study, it was found that 44% of respondents experienced a reduction in income as a result of the pandemic. Furthermore, respondents with reduced incomes adapted to starting a business (42%), looking for other sources of income or taking on projects as freelancers (22%), and reducing expenses (14%).

From the same study, Jenius also found several pain points faced by respondents who have just started their business, namely the mix of personal and business finances, difficulty managing stock goods, as well as a payment system that is still manual.

Departing from this, Waasi and his team also presented two solutions for SMEs i.e. Business Account and Businesskit. Business Accounts help businesses to separate personal and business finances and manage them through a single Jenius application. Meanwhile, Bisniskit helps business actors for business operations, such as taking notes stock goods, cash register, make invoice or receipts, and customer data management.

The Jenius Co.Create platform can also be used by MSME actors to learn and make connections. “Geniuses also hold various classes and talkshow with topics about business and business on the Jenius Co.Create platform. Anyone can join the class and build network with other business actors at Jenius Co.Create,” said Waasi.

Genius' future predictions and plans

Waasi predicts that the digital banking industry in Indonesia will have more choices and potential customers will also look for digital banking that suits their individual preferences.

To prepare for this, Waasi said that there are two things that Jenius plans in the future. “Genius' long-term focus will be deployed on presenting solutions life finance which continues to be relevant and complete so that people can manage all their life and financial needs through Jenius and continue to collaborate with more like-minded partners from various industries and also internationally,” concluded Waasi.

Strategy from Jenius as a digital bank pioneer, this is also a consideration for other players out there. Proven by their services that are included in the ranks Forbes World's Best Bank 2022 some time ago.