[Company Focus] From Card Recommendations to AI Financial Assistant... Banksalad Pursues KOSDAQ Listing

Banksalad, which used to find credit cards that fit consumption patterns, has entered the initial public offering (IPO) process. Having expanded its business from an asset management service that gathers and displays financial information to the brokerage of loans, insurance, and cards, Banksalad is now expanding its role into an AI financial assistant that analyzes customer data and even helps with necessary application procedures.

According to the financial sector on the 7th, Banksalad has submitted an application for preliminary examination for listing on the KOSDAQ to the Korea Exchange. The lead manager for the listing is Mirae Asset Securities. The scale and schedule of the public offering are expected to be determined in consultation with the lead manager depending on the progress of the examination.

Banksalad's business foundation began with financial product comparison and recommendation services. When Kim Tae-hoon founded Rainist (now Banksalad) in 2012, he focused on the information gap between financial companies and consumers. From the consumer's perspective, he believed it was difficult to judge whether the products recommended by financial companies were the most suitable for them. To resolve this, the company launched the Banksalad web service in 2014, which compares card and savings/deposit information and recommends products that fit individual consumption patterns.

The motivation for expanding the service was also user inconvenience. To reduce the hassle of having to manually enter payment information, they introduced a feature that automatically pulls card payment history. Later, reflecting the demand to manage not only expenditures but also other financial assets, they expanded into an asset management service that links financial accounts in 2017. By allowing users to check scattered assets and expenditures in one place, the service, which was used to find financial products, expanded its scope to daily money management.

Afterward, the company presented a plan to expand the benefits provided using customer data beyond the financial sector. In January 2021, the name of Rainist was changed to Banksalad, the same as the service name, and a direction was presented to expand the scope of data utilization to lifestyle areas such as health, housing, and automobiles. At the time, CEO Kim explained, "We plan to provide useful hyper-personalized services to individuals by utilizing customer data for the customers."

From 2022, as the financial MyData service was fully implemented, it became difficult to differentiate through the function of merely gathering financial information in one place. The challenge of how to provide benefits to customers by analyzing data emerged as a new competitive task. Accordingly, Banksalad found a solution in combining health data with financial information. Just as the appropriate card varies according to consumption patterns, they expanded their business into insurance analysis from the perspective that necessary insurance coverage also varies according to health status.

A representative example is 'Reduce Insurance Premiums with Health Information,' which was introduced in 2023 in collaboration with SELVAS AI. It uses AI to analyze health checkup details, age, gender, family history, etc., to guide users toward diseases to be cautious of, and simultaneously shows the insurance subscription status connected via MyData. Users can check if they have coverage to prepare for expected disease risks and which items are lacking. It went beyond simply inquiring about insurance subscription details to allowing users to check their coverage according to their individual health status.

While expanding the insurance analysis service, related businesses also showed growth. According to Banksalad, the insurance sector's revenue last year increased by 160% compared to the previous year, and the number of insurance consultations increased by 146%. The monthly active users (MAU) of the entire platform increased by 22%, and the average revenue per user (ARPU) increased by 25%.

Recently, in addition to recommending financial products, they are introducing AI agent services that perform application procedures on behalf of customers. In the asset management service where customers had to act themselves after checking information, they have reduced even the hassle of the execution process.

The AI interest rate reduction request service, launched in February this year, performs the interest rate reduction application procedure on behalf of the user upon receiving their consent. The method involves monitoring changes in credit status due to income increases or loan repayments, requesting an interest rate reduction from the financial company, and then guiding the results. Whether the interest rate is actually reduced is determined by the financial company's review.

In addition, in May, they also launched the 'Reduce Interest' service. By analyzing the customer's loan balance and interest rate, insurance contracts, and whether they own a car or house, it presents ways to reduce the interest burden, such as applying for the interest rate reduction request, loan transfers, or converting to collateralized loans. The scope has expanded from a function of searching for new financial products to a function of continuously managing held loans.

A Banksalad official stated, "In the future, we will develop into an AI agent service that innovates financial decision-making and execution, and we will move to strengthen business competitiveness based on the AI OS (Operating System)."

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