CT Appoints Indra Utoyo to Lead Allo Bank

The conglomerate and owner of CT Corp Chairul Tanjung officially announced Indra Utoyo as President Director of PT Hello Bank Tbk (IDX: BBHI). Indra Utoyo is trusted to bring Allo Bank to compete in the Indonesian digital banking industry.

Appointment Indra Utoyo conveyed by CT in a press conference, and only approved at the General Meeting of Shareholders (GMS) which was also held on the same day, Thursday (19/5).

As is known, Indra Utoyo is no longer a stranger to the telecommunications and banking industries. He is an important figure and has left legacy significantly in the digital transformation of two large state-owned companies, namely Telkom and BRI.

At Telkom, Indra worked for 17 years with his last position as Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer (CSO). He is also the pioneer of the Indigo Incubator program which launched in 2016. While at BRI, Indra served as Director of Digital, Information Technology, and Operations.

Through Allo Bank, Indra has a mission to build digital capabilities and talent as well as data technology so that they can present customer experience which is more customized and attached to the user.

"So is the vision as conveyed by Mr. CT, Allo Bank wants to be able to develop through the ecosystem and collaborate quickly and safely. Gradually, we will connect Allo Bank with the ecosystem under CT Corp. businesses others," said Indra after the press conference.

For information, CT annexed Allo Bank (formerly Bank Harda Internasional) by taking over its 73,71% stake at the end of 2020. Then, Hello Bank does rights issue involving digital companies such as Bukalapak, Carro, and Traveloka.

Target Allo Bank

Further, CT says application Hello Bank will officially air on Friday (20/5). He targets to get one million users in one week and ten million in his first year.

To achieve this target, CT said it would utilize the strength of its ecosystem. Currently, CT Corp has three large business units consisting of Mega Corp (finance), Trans Media (media), and Trans Corp (fashion, retail, F&B, hospitality, etc).

This also does not include the ecosystem of its strategic partners, such as Bukalapak, Carro, and Traveloka. However, integration and collaboration with strategic partners will be carried out in stages.

"We believe [with the strategy] O plus O or Offline more Online--not O2O yes--as a necessity. Increasingly, the market doesn't just want the number of customers, but also the [startup] can profitable. Therefore, we are open to collaboration to strengthen the ecosystem. We want to be an inclusive service," he said.

Meanwhile, CT mentioned loan services as one of the strategies to accelerate Allo Bank's growth. Users can later apply for loans in the Allo Bank application, namely Paylater and Instant Cash with a limit of up to Rp. 100 million.

"Currently we have not focused on fee based because it is still free [of fees], there is no monthly fee. Of course we think of a strategy to get fee based from other sources. For example, Paylater does not have interest, but there is fee based in the form of administrative costs. Everything counts. So we are looking for significant growth from loan products," he said.

digital bank

The phenomenon of digital banking in Indonesia is still rolling. After Bank Jago, BNC, Seabank, and BCA Digital, the market will be waiting for several players with new identities/faces who are believed to be entering digital and neobank banks.

In our notes, BNI is currently completing its acquisition of Bank Mayora. BNI cooperates with Sea Group, the parent of Shopee, as a partner to develop a business model and design IT infrastructure.

Not only big banks, the acquisition of small banks is also carried out by startups fintech. recently, Investree also announced the acquisition of a minority stake in Amar Bank of 18,84% some time ago. A corporate action was also carried out by the Modalku Group together with Carro to invest in shares (co-investments) in the Bank Index.

Previously, Director of the Center of Economic and Law Studies (Celios) Bhima Yudhistira said that the acquisition of small banks allowed rebranding efforts to be easier because small banks did not have infrastructure, branch offices, and large customers.

From the perpetrator's point of view fintech, the acquisition of mini-banks allows them to offer higher loan ceilings to customers from the loan limit with a maximum of IDR 2 billion.