Chartsiri Sophonpanich positioned Bangkok Bank as leading corporate lender in ASEAN

The Leadership Achievement Award for Best CEO is conferred every three years to ensure that heads of banks in each country can be reviewed over a meaningful period of time. Bank CEOs are assessed based on a rigorous and transparent set of evaluation criteria and the winner is selected by an international council of advisors from among a shortlist of peers in each country.

The council of advisors for The Asian Banker Leadership Achievement programme recognised the exceptional leadership of Bangkok Bank’s president Chartsiri Sophonpanich for strengthening its position as a leading corporate lender in ASEAN. Under his leadership, Bangkok Bank was also recognised as the Best Managed Bank in Thailand.

Among the Thai banks, Bangkok Bank has the largest market share in the corporate banking and international banking segments. Since opening its first overseas branch in Hong Kong in 1954, the bank has played a leading role in the economic development of Thailand and ASEAN, as well as building international business relationships in major economies around the world.

Under his leadership, the bank has doubled its international branch network, expanded its branch presence across ASEAN, and had an international network of more than 300 branches in 14 economies with more than 900 correspondent banks worldwide outside of Thailand. The bank’s international network accounts has now accounted for 25% of total loans, enabling the bank to diversify its portfolio geographically and widen its exposure to high-growth markets.

He also led the $2.7 billion acquisition of Indonesia’s Bank Permata, the largest acquisition in the bank’s history and the biggest ever intra-ASEAN bank acquisition. The takeover has strengthened Bangkok Bank’s position as a leading regional bank – now the sixth largest bank in ASEAN and the largest in Thailand by assets. The acquisition gave Bangkok Bank four million new customers, around 300 additional branches in Indonesia and added about $10.9 billion to its asset base.

He also led the acceleration of the bank’s digital transformation, breaking new ground in areas such as enterprise blockchain for trade finance, a new digital platform to digitise end-to-end from the procurement to payment process and real-time cross-border cash management and payments.

For individual customers, he guided the bank on improving the flagship mobile banking application as part of its mobile first strategy. The app now has more than 100 features, 30 of which were added last year. The app continues to attract many new customers thanks to its usability and excellent customer experience. More than 90% of customer transactions are now done via the app.

Under his leadership, Bangkok Bank also invested heavily in technology to enhance human resource information management through digital systems, provide digital learning and development tools and resources, improve the efficiency of internal operations and to help people develop the competencies and skills needed to develop innovation culture and capabilities.

For details about evaluation criteria and council of advisors of the Leadership Achievement Award programme, visit https://www.asianbankerawards.com/leadership/

To view the photo gallery of the Leadership Achievement Award ceremony, visit https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10160166616759804&type=3