WeLab completes acquisition of Bank Jasa Jakarta

WeLab, a pan-Asian fintech platform, has completed the acquisition of an Indonesian commercial bank, Bank Jasa Jakarta (BJJ) and together with Astra International (Astra).  According to the statement, the completion is marked by the issuance of acquisition approval by the Financial Services Authority (OJK).

For this transaction, a WeLab-led consortium, Welab Sky Limited (WeLab Sky), participated in the acquisition together with Astra’s subsidiary, Sedaya Multi Investama (Astra Financial). The WeLab-led consortium has drawn widespread support from existing and new investors, including Allianz X, Boyu Capital, Horizons Ventures, SCBX Group and TFB (Taipei Fubon Bank) Capital.

In December 2021, WeLab entered into a share purchase and subscription agreement with the shareholders of BJJ, and completed a strategic investment for 24% of BJJ. With the acquisition completed recently, WeLab and Astra each holds 49.56% of BJJ shares, becoming the majority shareholders and joint controllers of the bank.

The transaction is Southeast Asia’s digital bank's M&A transaction in 2022, illustrating the substantial commitment to invest in, and contribute to digitising Indonesia’s banking industry. The shareholders aim to transform BJJ into an innovative digital bank in Indonesia.

“Expanding WeLab’s digital banking presence across Asia, in Hong Kong and now in Indonesia, has been one of our key strategic moves. This partnership with Astra reinforces WeLab’s strategic focus on enhancing cross-country and business synergies with partners to increase scale and reach, in order to further strengthen the breadth and depth of the existing pan-Asian fintech platform. We’re excited that our long-term partner, Astra will be collaborating with us to deliver the best tech-driven banking services through BJJ in Indonesia. We look forward to bolstering the customer trust level with the collaboration with Astra,” Simon Loong, WeLab founder and group CEO explained.

“Investment in BJJ is in line with Astra aspirations in financial services pillars to become leading retail financial providers in Indonesia and support the growth of financial services industry as well as the economy of Indonesia,” president director of Astra Djony Bunarto Tjondro added.

WeLab and Astra are long-time partners in Indonesia’s fintech ecosystem. This is WeLab’s second strategic partnership initiative with Astra since the formation of a fintech lending joint venture, Astra WeLab Digital Arta (AWDA), in 2018.

The complementary strengths of the partners, including WeLab’s technology in building and being an operator in digital banking, together with Astra's solid business ecosystem and experience as well as a vast distribution network, are highly synergistic and key success factors to propel BJJ's digital transformation and into an innovative digital bank to serve the digital financial needs of Indonesians with accessible and innovative banking solutions.

The prospect of digital banking in Indonesia is currently on the rise and represents a huge opportunity to provide accessible and innovative digital banking solutions, especially to the retail and MSMEs (Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises) segments. The utilisation of financial services in Indonesia has the potential to grow, as 77% of Indonesia’s 270 million population is either underbanked or unbanked, since the country also has a sizable population of 180 million tech-savvy younger consumers, representing a great demand for digital banking services.

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