[SINGAPORE] It has been some two months since Lai Pei Si took over as chief executive officer of digital bank GXS Bank on Jun 1, and she is making talent her top priority.
Lai said that people are the ones actually building the bank, and it is important to have them aligned with GXS’ purpose. In hiring for GXS, it is not all about competencies, which should be a given.
“It’s really about getting the right mindset, and when you’re new, when you start things from scratch, the mindset that you need, and it’s actually really quite different,” Lai told The Business Times.
Curiosity is an important trait that GXS looks for in its employees, wanting people who want to find out the how and what in banking products. Coupled with the curiosity is the courage to challenge conventions and bring out products that would better serve GXS’ customer segments of gig workers, freelancers and young working adults.
The next big quality is empathy, which Lai has had to learn as well. Having been a banking professional for over 29 years, she’s learnt first hand that building a bank from scratch is hard. Even more so when there hasn’t been a new bank in the region for a while.
“To have empathy, to be able to understand, to be able to lead collaboration is extremely important,” Lai said.
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Finding folks with the different mindset stems from GXS’ parent companies Grab and Singtel, with Lai emphasising that GXS is a startup bank. This means that processes and procedures will have to be written up and built, as well as innovating to be different from the traditional banks.
“Working with your team members to bring a different product or solution, because if you bring the same solution, we’ll not be able to compete on the market because we are the new kid on the block. I think everybody knows that, then it’s really about just executing that well,” said Lai.
Rather than focusing on how long employees stay, Lai said engagement is key, especially when younger employees are not staying around for decades. Building an environment where employees are supported and are able to do meaningful work leads to better quality work, she said.
“That’s important, because we are new in the business, we have to be able to do better quality work and provide more differentiated solutions to be able to live in the market,” she said.
Priorities and cross-border replication
Lai is taking over the helm as GXS group continues to grow its net interest income (NII) and non-NII. NII for 2024 reached S$59.8 million, up from S$22.5 million in 2023. Non-NII hit S$1.9 million in 2024 up from S$1.2 million in 2023.
Operating expenses edged up to S$223.1 million in 2024, from S$214.3 million in 2023 – outpaced by the growth in NII. Similarly, losses increased to S$214.3 million in 2024 from S$208.2 million in 2023.
The priority now for Lai will be ensuring that GXS delivers in its mission and vision to be the digital bank in South-east Asia. GXS is across three markets of Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, and will be looking to scale the bank.
“How do we differentiate ourselves to be able to fulfill the mandate that we have originally taken our license for, that’s the first big thing we need to do,” said Lai.
Being a regional bank has also helped in rolling out features more quickly across the different banks. For instance GX Bank in Malaysia was the first to roll out a chatbot, which GXS was able to improve on and launch for Singapore.
Lessons learnt from one market are used for other markets, with GXS taking about 30 months to launch in Singapore. In Malaysia, GX Bank was able to be launched in 16 months building on GXS’ efforts.
“There is a lot of value in learning across entities and markets,” said Lai.
This is also being applied to the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) banking business, with Singapore leading the way. Coupled with the acquisition of SME lender Validus Capital’s Singapore business – which is renamed to GXS Capital – GXS has the complete suite of products for SMEs.
GX Bank has a beta version of SME banking, leveraging what GXS has built for the Singapore market for the Malaysia market. With both retail and SME banking built out, GXS will be focusing on solving the problems of its customer segments.
“Serving (the segments we want to serve) in a way that is valuable to them and valuable to us,” said Lai.
