WeLab and Astra complete the acquisition of Bank Jasa Jakarta

By Leandra Monteiro

WeLab, a pan-Asian FinTech platform, announced the completion of the acquisition of an Indonesian commercial bank, PT Bank Jasa Jakarta (BJJ), together with PT Astra International Tbk (Astra), one of Indonesia’s largest public companies.

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 PT Sedaya Multi Investama (Astra Financial). The WeLab-led consortium has drawn wide-spread 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 this latest acquisition completed, 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 largest digital bank M&A transaction in 2022, illustrating the substantial commitment to invest in, and contribute to digitizing Indonesia’s banking industry. The shareholders aim to transform BJJ into an innovative digital bank in Indonesia.

Simon Loong, Founder and Group CEO of WeLab, said, “Expanding WeLab’s digital banking presence across Asia, first 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.”

President Director of Astra, Djony Bunarto Tjondro, said, “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.”

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, PT Astra WeLab Digital Arta (AWDA), in 2018. The complementary strengths of the partners, including WeLab’s know-how and technology in building and being an operator in digital banking, together with Astra’s solid business ecosystem and experience as well as 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.