The acquisition of four Citi consumer businesses has supercharged UOB’s growth, making its pan-Asean network even harder to beat, especially in retail banking.
As 2024 began, the acquisitions were complete in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. And the benefits are already showing.
UOB’s current and savings account balances grew 19% year-on-year in 2024. Gross card fees were up 18%. Wealth-management income was up 30%, largely thanks to emerging affluent customers using the bank’s digital platforms. Consumer transaction volumes, notably cross-border scan-to-pay and peer-to-peer payments, rose strongly.
“We have defined our core market as Asean, because we believe in the growth story,” says Susan Hwee, head of group retail. “It’s the third largest population in the world. It’s got a young demographic that’s highly digital. There’s a growing affluence, and that gives us the opportunity to serve our retail customer needs – whether it’s payments, or wealth management, or other products – anchored with a regional, cross-border perspective.”
Part of the attraction of the Citi deal for UOB was the US bank’s strengths in unsecured lending – allowing for greater cross-selling potential among former Citi customers in areas such as deposits and wealth management, where UOB has invested. Citi’s skew to an emerging affluent demographic also syncs with the sort of customer UOB is targeting in the region.
There was a cultural fit, too, according to Hwee, which has helped it keep staff attrition to a minimum post-acquisition. She notes that both she and Jacquelyn Tan, group head of personal financial services, are ex-Citi bankers. “Citi, over the decades and years, has built a great entrepreneurial talent pool that we felt is synergistic to our own values of being enterprising,” Tan says in agreement.
According to UOB’s annual report, it has been Asean’s top bank in terms of Visa and Mastercard consumer credit card billings for the past two years
UOB now banks 8.4 million customers across Asean. Thanks to digital banking app TMRW, around half of its customers were acquired digitally, and 80% of its customers are digitally enabled. At the same time, it now has 400 branches, wealth management and private banking centres across the region and a shared ATM network of more than 1 million.
“As part of our regional ambition, we’ve invested heavily in a regional technology platform across our local subsidiaries, so that the products, experience, and brand are consistently aligned to drive the outcomes we want to achieve,” says Hwee.
One element of this technology investment is its use of AI and machine learning to personalise its offering – such as nudges to remind customers to top up balances on savings accounts to achieve higher rates, or a nudge when they return home from holiday to suggest that the customer reviews how much they spent while they were away. Its initiatives around fraud, meanwhile, included a new Money Lock feature in Singapore, so that customers can lock up funds in their existing accounts to prevent unauthorised transfers.
According to UOB’s annual report, it has been Asean’s top bank in terms of Visa and Mastercard consumer credit card billings for the past two years. That makes it an increasingly obvious choice for companies looking for a single consumer banking partner across the region: allowing customers attendant benefits, whether it’s on regional airlines, hotels and restaurants, fine dining experiences with Robert Parker, or the recent Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran Asean tours.
“We’re crafting propositions that allow our increasingly affluent customers in our region the access to the lifestyle areas that are important to them,” says Tan.
