KUALA LUMPUR: Kenanga Investment Bank Bhd has inked a memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Ant Group, whereby Kenanga will leverage mPaaS, a mobile development platform from Ant Group’s digital technology unit, to launch Malaysia’s first wealth superapp in the first quarter of next year.
Kenanga group managing director Datuk Chay Wai Leong said it will invest RM10-15 million in the project, where the wealth-centric superapp will house different trading, investing, savings, insurance products and services into one cohesive easy to access platform.
“The initial target audience we have is the mass affluent, so that is what we are focusing on. But eventually we want to target the masses, because everybody should be saving (and) should try to invest for the future. Ultimately, that would be our direction,” he said at a press conference after the MoU signing yesterday.
Meanwhile, Ant Group international business general manager Derrick Lo said digital trust is crucial and by partnering with Kenanga it is offering a one-stop shop of investment literacy and financial inclusion.
“We have also infused a large degree of analytics that will be managed and handled by Kenanga in full compliance with data privacy. The data will allow Kenanga to continuously monitor, detect and preempt threats or any attack vectors that might come in due to unusual behaviour.
“Security, especially digital trust, is always top of mind for Ant Group. It is the way we have worked with the 1.3 billion users. It is the way we have partnered with 10 Ant-invested companies across the region to be where we are today but at the same time, we are now partnering with Kenanga to also work with their expertise in delivering this superapp that will ultimately convey the trust to the users of Malaysia.”
Ant Group is an affiliate company of Chinese conglomerate Alibaba Group and owns mobile (digital) payment platform Alipay. Currently, its e-wallet partners include KakaoPay (South Korea), GCash Inc (Philippines), Touch ‘n Go eWallet (Malaysia), TrueMoney in Thailand and Dana (Indonesia).
