Expert: Digitisation of financial services to help MSMEs

Jakarta — Prasasti Piter Abdullah, Director of Program and Policy at the Centre for Policy Studies, said the digitisation of financial services, such as the ‘pockets’ feature, is not only beneficial for personal financial management but can also help MSMEs. ‘Educating MSMEs about this, I think it’s very beneficial, because in digital banks there are pockets facilities available, so with pockets we can know the real-time state of finances,’ he said in a statement released in Jakarta on Friday. In the Katadata Middle Class Insight (KIMCI) survey, it was noted that 51.8 percent of the middle class separate expenditure according to needs. This aligns with the popularity of the pockets feature in digital financial services to help manage finances. In that survey, the top three habits of the middle class were planning expenditure and income (68 percent), separating money for monthly bills and daily needs (51.8 percent), and recording expenditures (44.9 percent). The survey indicates the middle class have awareness and various ways to manage finances. In budgeting, one increasingly used approach is the pockets feature in digital financial services. A separate survey conducted by the same body found that 86 percent of people were already aware of the feature because it has been adopted by banks such as Bank Jago, BCA and Mandiri. The same survey also stated that 9 out of 10 users said the pockets feature had an impact on healthier finances. Piter said the use of pockets in digital financial services represents a change in how people manage their finances. ‘Now you can open an account without going to a bank, you can open an account and one account can have many pockets. Various ecosystems linked to finance are now available,’ he said. Meanwhile, Fadhila Maulida, a researcher at the Center for Digital Economy and MSMEs at Indef, said the presence of digital banks can help traditional financial habits become more modern, such as the ‘pockets’ feature in digital financial services. ‘Actually, digital banks are more of an enabler of envelopes becoming digital,’ she said. In this context, the pockets feature can be seen as a digitalisation of long-standing family habits. Technology strengthens financial management practices that people have long known, while making them more practical, easier to monitor, and integrated with daily financial activity. On the other hand, Trioksa Siahaan, Head of Research and Product Development at the Indonesian Banking Development Institute (LPPI), reminded that in financial planning, especially for the middle class, priorities need to be carefully considered. ‘If I view it like this, for the middle class especially, discipline is key. When you earn income, allocate what is for essential needs; you must be able to differentiate between essentials and lifestyle,’ she said. A separate study titled ‘Study on Financial Allocation Behaviour in the Digital Bank Feature’ was conducted using an online survey and involved nearly 2,000 respondents from ten major Indonesian cities, including Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Medan, Palembang, Makassar, Denpasar and Balikpapan.