Can you imagine a digital-only bank that has served 100 million customers within four years since its establishment? Not to mention those 100 million customers are all un-/underserved by traditional banks. Tencent-backed WeBank has achieved this goal and has become the largest digital bank in the world. The secret sauces of WeBank are the tech-driven innovations powered by AI and its differentiation across five digital dimensions: strategy, culture, talent, organization structure, and technology.

Strategy: WeBank developed a disruptive credit profiling system to drive inclusive finance. It has adopted an ambitious strategy focused on inclusion, data-driven insights, and collaboration.

Culture: WeBank built and sustains an innovative culture. Right from the start, the digital bank encouraged customers to take measured risk and learn from failure and fostered a diversified, equal, and collaborative culture.

Talent: WeBank nurtures internal and external talent to foster innovation. WeBank pays attention to its internal employee career and skill development by providing personalized training programs. It has also partnered with global universities to foster its people.

Organization structure: WeBank organizes for agility. WeBank has enabled an agile organization matrix that avoids redundant and complex management layers. It also focuses on cross-functional and even cross-organizational teamwork, which enables a fast test-and-learn product development cycle.

Technology: WeBank embraced emerging tech to build for agility and scalability. WeBank combines a multitude of modern technologies to provide the foundation for a forward-looking banking platform architecture that includes the cloud, open technologies and open source databases, and powerful embedded analytics and AI.

The story of WeBank is truly impressive. If you are interested in learning more, please take a look at our just-published case study: “Case Study: How WeBank Became The World’s Leading Digital Bank.” And if you’d like to share your company’s strategy for digital banking, feel free to reach out to me or set up an inquiry by emailing inquiry@forrester.com.

For a deeper analysis of the financial services customer in Asia Pacific, download Forrester’s complimentary guide.