State agencies and state-run banks have been harnessing technology to enhance their performance, ranging from analysing suspicious tax evasion cases to facilitating bank customers conducting a live chat to request a loan.
Mr Chatchai says digitalisation will help Government Housing Bank reduce its operating costs, which will pave the way for it to offer lower interest rates to loan customers.
Chatchai Sirilai, Government Housing Bank's (GH Bank) president, said that by the first quarter of next year, the bank's front office and back office will be completely digitalised.
This digitalisation will help GH Bank reduce its operating costs, which will pave the way for it to offer lower interest rates to loan customers. The lower interest rate will expand opportunities for low- and middle-income people to access a loan.
LIVE CHAT FOR LOAN
Mr Chatchai said that GH Bank will also provide more convenience to customers in the first quarter of next year by allowing them to conduct a live chat with the bank's staffers to request a mortgage loan.
With the live chat feature, customers will no longer need to go to GH Bank branches, in line with social distancing practice amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Once their loan is preliminarily approved, they can go to a bank branch to submit the required paper documents.
The live chat function will be available on the GHB All mobile application. The app has seen more than one million transactions as of Sept 30, up 34.21% from the end of last year. Currently the app has more than 1.142 million users.
GH Bank will also promote the use of an e-signature with a mortgage loan contract. The customers can sign at either the bank branches or more convenient locations, such as the customers' offices.
Mr Chatchai said that one change brought about by the use of technology is that after the granting of the mortgage loan, the customers can keep their land title deed papers, unlike in the past when the bank would keep the land title deeds. The change helps GH Bank save on the cost of storing the document.
However, this does not mean that the customers can still use the same title deeds to ask for the loan from other financial institutions. GH Bank links its mortgage loan system with the Department of Lands' data system. Once the customers place their land title deeds as collateral with GH Bank, they will not be able to use the same title deeds to ask for loans from other banks.
As of the first nine months of this year, GH Bank provided new loans worth 166 billion baht, up 6.53% year-on-year. Mr Chatchai is confident that the bank will meet this year's loan target of 215 billion baht.
As of the third quarter, GH Bank had outstanding loans of 1.408 trillion baht, up 5.66% from the end of last year.
USE OF DATA ANALYTICS TOOL
The Revenue Department is one of the state agencies banking on the technology to improve its operation.
Recently it has teamed up with the Department of Special Investigation to use a data analytics tool in their analysis of suspicious tax evasion cases.
The revenue department's director-general Ekniti Nitithanprapas said the move is in line with the department's ongoing implementation of the digital transformation and the deployment of the data analytics system to foster its operation.
He added that both state agencies have worked closely in preventing and suppressing crime, including cases of fake tax invoices or the unlawful issuance of tax invoices.
As both want to grow their evidence collection capacities and cut red tape in their working processes, they have also jointly set the direction of collaboration in the future.
Earlier, the revenue department disclosed that it has leveraged the data analytics tool to boost its tax collection performance. This enables it to attract a greater number of people into the tax system, particularly those selling products and services online.
The number of online traders has risen in recent years due to the e-commerce boom. This prompted the department to deploy the data analytics tool to analyse them and then draw them into the tax system.
Kulaya Tantitemit, comptroller-general of the Comptroller General's Department, said that the finance ministry's state agencies have utilised the digital technology in enhancing its implementation of public policies and stimulus packages even before the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in Thailand in early 2020.
The use of digital technology was fully utilised after the pandemic started as the state agencies have had to provide quicker financial assistance to the public, in line with the Covid-19 situation and social distancing, Ms Kulaya said at the Bank of Thailand's recent Bangkok FinTech Fair 2021.
AI FOR AUDITING TASKS
The State Audit Office (SAO), which was founded more than a century ago, has also embraced the digital revolution by using advanced technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) for its auditing tasks.
Recently, Prajuck Boonyoung, auditor-general of the SAO, said he is hopeful that the adoption of advanced technology will improve the organisation's performance.
The auditor has joined forces with the Anti-Corruption Organization of Thailand to install an AI system to support its audit of the results of e-government procurement. In addition, the SAO is using a text mining process to examine the contracts state agencies awarded to contractors to develop their projects.
The SAO is also equipping its officials with strategic thinking and data analysis skills to make them "auditors of the future". Mr Prajuck said officials need to be able to analyse whether state projects bring real benefits to the public. They should also be able to pinpoint which data type they should focus on for effective analysis in their audits.