“We transformed ourselves and the way we think about business,” says Maybank Indonesia’s Chief Digital Officer Charles Budiman, about what it took to design the mobile app’s AI features. The bank considered specific pain points for four distinct customer segments including young professionals, young families, midlifers, and a silver/golden age group. Through tailored financial and investment advice, the app lets users visualize their daily spending patterns while also encouraging future savings, according to Budiman, who has played a fundamental role in steering the company’s project.

Maybank Indonesia has taken a hybrid approach to AI implementation, blending internal AI expertise with that of third-party partners. According to the recently published Enterprise AI Maturity Index by Oxford Economics and ServiceNow, this hybrid approach is shared by just over one-third of global C-suite executives surveyed about their organization’s AI efforts.

The hesitance by some of the bank’s leadership to adopt this new technology and take on additional risk was offset by the potential benefits that such AI tools could deliver to customers and to the bank. “When you implement something completely new, there are always going to be risks,” Budiman says. “The key point is more about how to mitigate them.”

While Budiman says he expects investments in emerging digital technologies, including AI, to increase over the next few years, he cautions that Maybank faces technological challenges that are unique to retail banking, specifically those related to poor data quality. To overcome these, Maybank merges internal data on transaction patterns with external consumer-spending data to develop more reliable business cases. Since data is the lifeblood of AI, ensuring bank data is accurate is of paramount importance.

Another challenge is attracting and retaining skilled labor in the regions where the bank operates. “It requires a lot of thinking about the way we manage our workforce—which is already mainly coming from Gen Z and millennials,” Budiman says. In Indonesia, for example, the demand for digital skills is extremely high while the supply remains limited, adding to the competitive environment.

When Budiman envisions the future of banking, he sees AI as central to offering accurate, tailored services based on deep insights into customer behavior and providing personalized experiences that help customers meet their financial goals. “You can have the greatest strategy, but if there aren’t customers who are satisfied with your product, then forget it,” he says.

Maybank has taken an early lead with its strategic embrace of AI, which promises to revolutionize the way financial institutions operate and serve their customers. “We are fully aware that this technology will play an even greater role in the future with regards to how we run our business,” he says.

Budiman believes that in the future, AI will enable ever-greater innovation, operational efficiencies, customer satisfaction, and value generation, which will allow it to invest even more into AI to better serve its customers and attract new ones.