BRI Chief Executive Talks Evolution of Banking, Touching on Digitalisation and AI

Yogyakarta, CNBC Indonesia - The President Director of PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia (Persero) Tbk. (BBRI), Hery Gunardi, was one of the speakers at Business Talk The Bankers as part of the Jogja Financial Festival at Jogja Expo Center, Special Region of Yogyakarta, on Saturday (23 May 2026). In his presentation, Hery spoke about the evolution of banking.

To begin, he explained that banks are intermediaries. In other words, banks collect public funds and then channel them to finance businesses that need financing.

‘From the activity of distributing funds, banking, of course, earns a margin, which we call the net interest margin. That’s where the bank lives,’ he said.

‘The bank must have many customers. So the people behind them must become BRI’s customers, right?’ he continued.

According to Hery, banking is constantly changing and evolving. He then quoted the explanation of prominent author Brett King, who writes extensively about banking.

In the bank 1.0 era, the bank’s basic service was transactions using only checks and giro. Then the bank 2.0 era saw the emergence of automated teller machines (ATMs) that can serve customers 24/7.

‘Then bank 3.0 is also related to internet banking. So customers may no longer need to come to a branch, for example for corporate customers, they can conduct transactions from the office with internet banking,’ Hery said.

‘The fourth is financial technology, fintech and also digitalisation. Now digital is indeed changing the behaviour, the conduct, of customers in Indonesia especially and also abroad, for example,’ he continued.

Hery said digitalisation in the banking sector is very fast. The Covid-19 pandemic a few years ago accelerated the process.

‘Customers can’t come to the branch. So those who were previously tech-illiterate, who couldn’t use mobile banking, were forced to use mobile banking, because they couldn’t come to the ATM, couldn’t come to the branch, couldn’t transact at the teller, and so on,’ Hery said.

Citing Bank Indonesia data, he revealed that during the Covid-19 pandemic, there were around 50 million to 60 million new users of online banking and mobile banking.

‘Now the question is, how will banks transform as technology, the business environment and customers become more complex?’ he said.

According to him, banks must change their ways of working and their services to customers to stay updated and remain relevant to customers.

‘What is being done is, as I mentioned earlier, Brett King says, banks are, according to Brett King, a technology company with a bank licence. In fact, banks are technology companies,’ he said.

So, he continued, given this condition, banking cannot resist the changing times.

‘This is a must: we must transform ourselves. Not only digitalisation, not only automation, but also now with AI and Gen AI. If that isn’t changed, we will no longer follow this trend; customers will abandon the banks,’ he said.