Asean is one of the most digitally connected regions globally. According to AseanStats 2024, more than 80% of the population were internet users in Asean, with the exception of Indonesia and Laos. Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore — with a total population of more than 110 million — had more than 90% of the population as internet users. 

UOB is the regional bank with the highest exposure to Asean, both in wholesale and retail banking. Within the region, UOB has wholly-owned banking subsidiaries in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. UOB adopts a digital-first approach to banking — with more than 80% of its retail customers being digitally enabled as of the first half of 2025. In fact, around one in two of its new-to-bank customers was acquired digitally. 

Following the acquisition of Citigroup’s consumer banking business in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam, UOB’s retail customer base across Asean has expanded to 8.4 million. As the only regional bank with a unified digital bank app, UOB TMRW, across all its markets, the all-in-one app played a vital role in the integration of the acquired business. The Bank was able to onboard ex-Citi customers swiftly and serve them immediately. UOB TMRW also continues to be a key engine in growing the customer base organically throughout the region. 

Disrupting tradition to define tomorrow

UOB first launched TMRW in Thailand in 2019, making it the first bank to launch a digital bank in Asean. 

“Almost a decade ago, the Bank asked itself: What will banking look like 10 years from now?” says Stuart Smith, Head of Innovation, UOB Group Retail TMRW. “Fast forward to today, the leadership at UOB was visionary; they saw digital banking coming, and that it would be a significant part of the Bank’s future.” 

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Smith joined UOB eight years ago and was part of the team that was instrumental in shaping UOB TMRW. He recalls the strategic decision to launch in Thailand — a market with a young, digitally savvy population. 

“We originally set out to build a standalone digital bank in markets where we wanted to grow and already had a footprint,” says Smith. “Thailand was the natural choice. Its youthful demographic aligned with our target segment, and it gave us the perfect ground to understand end-to-end digitisation — lessons that have powered our scale today.”

At its conception, UOB TMRW was ideated to challenge the market and the Bank’s own conventions, a strategic move focused on customer engagement and personalisation at scale, which was a novel idea then. “We collaborated with fintechs as well as our in-house technology and data teams to harness data and artificial intelligence to deepen our understanding of customers through their behaviour, enabling us to support their banking needs, from savings to tracking day-to-day expenses,” he adds. 

Where innovation never stops 

As a digital bank app that evolves with its customers, UOB TMRW is designed to continuously learn from customer interactions with the app, capturing banking behaviours and preferences. Powered by AI, UOB TMRW translates this data into hyper-personalised insights to help customers save, spend and invest better. 

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For example, UOB TMRW customises its offerings for different countries. Users of UOB TMRW Indonesia have an interactive savings game, City of TMRW, to encourage customers to save. “Our data showed that the local demographic would like some help with saving. We enhanced City of TMRW further with an Auto-Save feature, which was driven by AI and personalised to each customer, to respond to their need,” says Smith.

UOB TMRW’s intelligent nudges also remind customers of their spending habits and empower them to stay on top of their finances. For instance, users receive reminders to top up funds to achieve higher interest rates, or to consider setting aside excess savings for investments when they have maximised interest on their UOB One Account. Personalised insights also include proactively alerting customers of duplicate charges and unusual spending patterns, and offering financial content and expert analysis to help customers stay informed. With a Rewards+ programme featuring more than 1,000 curated local and regional deals, UOB TMRW recommends attractive offers tailored to customers’ spending patterns and current location. 

“We are constantly analysing data from the app. This helps us to better understand customers’ behaviours and preferences, so that we can tailor services, refine features, and deliver experiences that truly resonate,” says Smith.

“The technology ensures that although the app is consistent, each customer should be able to get a unique experience. Customers can personalise UOB TMRW based on what matters to them — from viewing balances to toggling notifications. We’re also exploring more features that allow customers to tailor the app to what they prefer and need. As digital banking evolves, it’s all about making the experience simple, intuitive and personal,” he adds.

Serving the entire wealth continuum 

UOB’s Asean Consumer Sentiment Survey 2025 showed that close to one in two regional consumers prefer to buy investment products online and favour digital channels for financial advice and investment. This affirms UOB’s strategy to roll out a regional wealth platform to cater to customers online and to make investing smart, simple and accessible. 

UOB TMRW is the Bank’s common platform to offer digital investment capabilities across the region, with digital wealth rolled out in Singapore in 2021, Thailand in 2024, and Indonesia and Malaysia in 2025. Through self-serve tools on UOB TMRW, customers can access more than 100 curated unit trusts grouped by sector or interest, and choose from four UOB Invest fund portfolios — Play Safe, Stable Income, Income, and Growth — tailored to different risk appetites and life stages, starting from just $100 in Singapore. Customers also benefit from the Private Bank Chief Investment Office’s (CIO) expertise via the CIO Income and Growth Funds.

“UOB TMRW will soon bring together our retail bank and private bank offerings on a single, intelligent platform. Beyond the new private bank feature, we are also constantly looking at how we can enhance the app to bring a better, seamless and safer banking experience for all our customers,” says Smith. 

Strong payment capabilities reflect the bank’s leading regional position

As the regional bank with the most comprehensive network across Asean, facilitating cross-border travel and spending is one of the Bank’s key priorities. 

Notably, Asean consumers are increasingly able to use their bank apps across borders for payments and other services. It is hence not surprising that the most used features on UOB TMRW are its payment features, whether it’s QR codes or PayNow. 

“In Indonesia, we were one of the first to offer QRIS (quick response) code,” adds Smith. 

As a case in point, Singapore retail customers of UOB TMRW are able to use PromptPay and DuitNow, the FAST payment systems in Thailand and Malaysia, when they travel to these countries. 

Further enhancements for UOB TMRW’s cross-border payments, cards and payments, as well as security features, are planned. The user experience is also likely to be improved through widgets and UI navigation features.

Continuous loop of learning

Customer feedback is crucial to UOB TMRW to ensure the app and offerings are what customers need. To gauge customer feedback, UOB TMRW has a full infrastructure for customer satisfaction and benchmarking key journeys in the app, including onboarding customers, payments, and so on. 

“We take in feedback from multiple channels, including the app store, ratings on our insights, and we will look at the comments people send to improve the digital experience,” Smith adds. “We have an established customer experience team for UOB TMRW. On top of that, we have various teams and researchers who are looking at new products and services. Our teams sit with the various customer segments to find out what they want.”

More importantly, as the industry matures, UOB has further invested in resilience and infrastructure to mitigate any incidents. “It’s a lesson the industry has learnt over the last decade, on the volume and throughput, and what it means to be a 24/7 bank,” he adds. 

Competition drives innovation

UOB TMRW is a digital offering, but customers in all its regional subsidiaries can also walk into a branch for a more in-depth interaction — a classic display of an omni-channel approach complementing a digital-first strategy.

When asked about competition, Smith is candid: “We welcome it. We have always embraced choice in the market, and we learn a lot from competition and by looking around the world,” Smith says. 

“We trial and test everything extensively. Some things work, some things work well, and some don’t. We learn from fintechs, other banks and our customers, and build on their ideas and innovations. It’s all part of building that evolving experience for our customers,” he adds.

The focus for UOB is to ensure overall profitability in the long run. With the regional population becoming more digitally active, UOB TMRW’s addressable market will continue to increase, and UOB TMRW’s features will be continually improved to serve this digital audience and stay competitive against disruptors and traditional banks.