How Ant Financial Will Completely Change the Pakistani Retail Banking Landscape

Banking in Pakistan is an extremely in-efficient industry where 35+ banks have only been able to bank 25 million Pakistanis in the last 70 odd years. This means that as an industry, banks are providing their services to only 12% of the population. The branchless banking industry has not fared much better either with only 35 million wallets out of which 50% are inactive (no activity in the past 3 months). This is a sorry state of affairs by any yardstick. In the new world, wherever there has been inefficiency in an industry, it has been disrupted – big time! Uber, Didichuxing, Careem, Grab have decimated the taxi industry worldwide. AirBnB has dented the hotel industry significantly to the extent that Airbnb is now bigger than the world's top five hotel brands put together. PayTM in India (Ant owns more than 50% of Paytm and has injected close to US$ 1 billion into this company) has now become the biggest financial firm in India, in less than five years. and plans to become the world's largest digital bank with 500 million account holders. With all the inefficiencies found in it's midst, the retail banking industry in Pakistan is a prime candidate for this type of massive disruption.

In this backdrop comes the Ant Financial Services Group (established by Alibaba Group and its founder Jack Ma) acquisition of 45% of Telenor Microfinance Bank (TMB) for US$ 185 million at a total post money valuation of US$ 410 million. Make no bones about it - this is a VERY big deal. As a comparison, 100% of RBS Pakistan was sold to Faysal Bank for US$ 50 million. Please note that Ant has not valued a Pakistani micro finance bank at US$ 410 million. What they have valued is the almost complete takeover of the retail financial services market from incumbent banks. They realize that Pakistan is one of the most in-efficient banking markets in the world and it will be simple to take every last morsel of the retail banking pie from banks. The market potential of some 100 million un-banked individuals is a mouth-watering prospect for Ant.

How Will “Ant Paisa Bank” Take Over Retail Banking in Pakistan?

-     Go big on QR: Ant will introduce Alipay (or a local variant) here in Pakistan. This will be their big play to capture a huge chunk of retails payments which are currently happening in cash. QR uptake has been slow in Pakistan where only small players like FonePay are pushing it. With the financial & marketing muscle that Ant brings, they will make QR payments common with incentives on both the merchant and customer side.

-     Digital Lending: This will be the secret sauce which finally tips the scale for digitization of payments in Pakistan. Consumer lending via Ant has reached $95 billion in China and Paytm in India launched Paytm Score in February which they will use to lend to users of their platform. Our biggest hurdle in digitizing cash payments has been the reluctance of users (especially merchants) to document their cash flow fearing tax implications. In a country where less than 1% of the population pays tax, this has always been the biggest impediment in digitizing payments. However, once the conversation switches to these merchants receiving funding/loans from Ant based on their throughput via Ant channels (i.e. giving loans to small businesses for purchasing goods from Ali Baba), they will be more than happy to roll the transaction through digital channels.

-      Technology Stack: In a recent interview post the Ant investment, Shahid Mustafa, CEO of Telenor Bank said “….there’s a sunset date for the current technology and that’s when we will look to upgrade the back-end technology”. With all the financial clout that Ant will bring, the thing that will break the proverbial camel’s back (the camel being the Pakistani financial industry) will be the tech prowess that Ant will introduce in Pakistan. MIT Tech Review published an article with the headline “Meet the Chinese Finance Giant That’s Secretly an AI Company” referring to Ant’s AI, computer vision and natural language processing capabilities. This is how important AI is to Ant. Last year the company acquired EyeVerify, a U.S. company that makes eye recognition software. Ant will bring AI powered payments, lending, insurance, and anti-fraud capabilities to Pakistan and completely transform the way financial services are delivered. Think Instant and Frictionless.

-      Amazing User Experiences: The news of Ant buying Daraz, the largest e-commerce player in Pakistan, has been doing the round for quite some time. If this deal goes through, Ant will bring it’s world class e-commerce expertise via Ali Baba to Pakistan. Digital payments has always been a challenge for e-commerce in Pakistan. Having both the payment and e-comm side under its control, Ant can make a huge dent into both these fledgling areas. Imagine being offered an AI-powered personalized & instant loan on shopping done on Daraz. Imagine being able to file an insurance claim for a car accident where all you need to do is take a picture of the accident and Ant’s AI image processing engine will finalize the findings in seconds. Imagine bots talking to Pakistanis in any regional language to handle customer service or conduct transactions (voice will remove the last block in making digitization widespread in Pakistan where lack of education prevents reading and writing based solutions to gain traction)

Why Does This Matter to Existing Banks?

With the marketing and tech muscle that Ant will bring into Pakistan, the next 24 months are going to be critical for small to mid-sized banks. Easypaisa is a brand that resonates both with the un-banked and the youth. These markets are major growth areas for banks going forward and if these are taken away by Easypaisa due to providing delightful user experiences, the oxygen will be sucked out of this industry. Expect to see a LOT of mergers among the incumbent banks. The big-5 may survive due to their corporate and treasury business but the mid to small sized banks will go under water due to the coming tsunami. It may seem that I may be overstating the threat but this is not the case. There is a high level of digital illiteracy on the management boards of Pakistani banks and the average age of C-level suites in banks is 50+. There is too much old-world thinking in corridors of powers in banks. There is ZERO realization of what is coming and how big this sea change will be.

What Can Existing Banks Do?

Are we looking to help banks that charge customers an average of PKR 50 for an Interbank Fund Transfer (IBFT) transaction (some are charging more than PKR 150) while giving out free checkbooks? Most banks think they’ve become digital because they’ve rolled out a mobile app. All the other important areas like account opening, lending, payments continue the way they were implemented in the mid-90s. This is not digital. And no Head of Digital Transformation or a Head of Innovation can convert a dinosaur into an agile cheetah. Transforming an organisation is next to impossible due to legacy systems and legacy mindsets (Nokia and Kodak couldn't do it). Digital is a complete transformation of the foundations of the organization and most organizations let alone banks are not capable to carry out this kind of transformation. The ONLY way to do a successful digital transformation is to bring in fresh thinking from outside the organization. This super experienced team must have a technologist mindset and be FULLY empowered by the board to completely re-think the way ALL processes are structured within the bank (it'll be great if you can keep this team away from the head office) . The digital native customer expects instant gratification and everything from account opening to lending MUST be instant. This will of course require a huge AI component since instant decisions will require an advanced level of machine learning and processing. So expect to hire quite a few data scientists. Also look to partner with local and international fintechs to provide you with the tools necessary to build products and services that delight your customers.

If you can do this in the next 24 months, take the new digital bank license that the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) will be issuing soon and launch a digital bank under a new brand (if you think your existing brand has any value in the new economy – think again). If this seems unnecessary and my words sound like an over-reaction, fair enough. Just be prepared to becoming irrelevant in an organization that is rotting from the inside.