AI is no longer just a tool assisting banks; it has become the core operating system for understanding customers, predicting risks, and designing financial services.
Lee Eun-mi, CEO of Toss Bank, is evolving the institution from a simple internet bank into a new digital bank driven by AI and data.
Since taking office, he has achieved the bank's first annual profit and strengthened its financial health, laying the groundwork for expanding non-interest income, entering global markets, and building a lifestyle finance platform.
Lee's vision for AI finance is not merely about technological innovation but about deeply understanding customers through data and transforming the financial experience itself.
He is preparing for an era where AI is not just the future of banking but banking itself.
AI Must Become the Operating System of Banking
Lee has long emphasized the integration of financial data and AI. While at DGB Daegu Bank, he established a collaboration framework with the Financial Settlement Institute, stating, "We will enhance our competitiveness in financial data and advance data-driven financial services."
He stressed that when financial-related data is aggregated, AI can provide more accurate answers, viewing it not merely as automation technology but as a crucial tool for financial decision-making.
This philosophy continues at Toss Bank, where AI should become the new operating system for better understanding customers and running the bank more intelligently.
Data is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage
Lee identifies data as Toss Bank's greatest asset. By the end of 2024, the bank had accumulated financial data from 11.78 million customers, leveraging AI to expand personalized financial services.
He aims to analyze customers' financial behaviors to proactively suggest necessary products and build services that support various aspects of their lives.
Notably, services for asset management and healthcare for middle-aged and older adults, enhancements to foreign currency accounts, and the expansion of global remittance services are all strategies aimed at innovating customer experiences through data and AI.
He believes that finance is an industry that understands customers through data, not just products.
Creating a New Banking Experience with AI
Lee emphasizes, "We will continue to provide customers with a new banking experience while maintaining Toss Bank's innovative DNA." Unlike traditional banks that compete on product offerings, he focuses on using AI and digital technology to address points of customer inconvenience.
The foreign currency account reached 2 million users and surpassed 18 trillion won in cumulative exchange volume within just 11 months of its launch. The bank plans to enhance this service with overseas remittance capabilities, evolving into a global financial platform. AI will be the key technology that optimizes these services for individual customers and connects them more seamlessly.
AI Expands Financial Inclusion
Lee's vision for AI finance is closely linked to inclusive finance. Toss Bank maintains the highest proportion of loans to low- and medium-credit borrowers among internet banks and supports financially vulnerable groups through services like the Sunshine Loan Bank and loan repayment remodeling.
Since its inception, the bank has provided 8.3 trillion won in loans to 310,000 low- and medium-credit borrowers and has helped approximately 74,000 customers reduce their repayment burdens.
AI and data analysis are utilized to assess the creditworthiness of customers who have been overlooked by traditional financial institutions, enhancing financial accessibility. He believes that innovation is meaningful only when it provides more people with financial opportunities.
Balancing AI and Risk Management
Lee stresses that innovation and soundness must go hand in hand. In its first year, Toss Bank achieved its first annual profit since its inception, with significant improvements in key soundness indicators such as the BIS ratio and loan loss reserve ratio.
He promised to make 2024 the year of achieving the first annual profit and to strengthen financial stability and risk management capabilities, demonstrating this through tangible results.
AI has proven to be not just a tool for expanding sales but a management tool for predicting risks and enhancing financial stability.
A Leader Who Questions Shapes the AI Era
Lee's leadership is characterized by a constant quest for inquiry. He does not demand answers from his employees. "Machines calculate better than humans, but they cannot think," he asserts, emphasizing the need to create an organization that encourages independent thinking rather than one that simply seeks to answer the boss's questions.
During his time at HSBC, he learned programming to develop financial and risk management programs with his team, which were recognized as best practices in HSBC Asia-Pacific and adopted as global standards. He believes that in the AI era, human creativity and questioning are increasingly vital.
Preparing for Global AI Finance
Lee is looking for Toss Bank's next growth driver in the global market. He states, "Toss Bank's differentiated service strategy is competitive enough in the global market." The expansion of foreign currency accounts and overseas remittance services, entry into global markets, and digital platform expansion are all strategies aimed at creating new growth engines through AI-based services.
AI is the key technology that connects cross-border financial services more quickly and securely, and Toss Bank aims to leap from being a domestic internet bank to a global digital bank.
The Essence of Financial Entrepreneurship
Lee Eun-mi's vision of financial entrepreneurship is to transform the operating system of banking through AI and data. He views AI not as a flashy technology but as a fundamental basis for enhancing customer experience, risk management, inclusive finance, and global competitiveness.
Strategies for data-driven personalized finance, lifestyle finance platforms, expanding inclusive finance, and global expansion all point in the same direction.
Toss Bank must evolve into an AI-native bank, aiming to be the first bank that comes to customers' minds. In the AI era, a bank's competitiveness lies not in the number of branches but in how well it understands data and deeply comprehends its customers. Lee is leading this change as a practical digital finance leader.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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