Shareholders rewarded with high dividends

PETALING JAYA: Shareholders of Bank Rakyat have enjoyed far better returns, surpassing even the Ama­­nah Saham Bumiputra investment schemes, in the last five years.

An average 15% dividend is the very reason that people will queue overnight to get their hands on a block of shares from the cooperative.

“Every time Bank Rakyat sells its shares, you will see a long queue in its branches because only a limited amount is available,” said a shareholder who has been holding shares in the cooperative for over 10 years.

It is believed that the last time the shares of the co-operative was up for sale to the public was in 2011.

“It is usually open for Bank Rak­yat employees before it is offered to the public,” said the shareholder.

Last year, Bank Rakyat gave out a 13% dividend or a total of RM390mil to its shareholders.

According to its 2015 annual report, the bank has a total of 907,918 shareholders, of whom 99.7% are individuals.

The bank is always targeting to pay out dividends of between 13% and 16%.

Bank Rakyat is the market leader in the personal financing segment market with six million customers serviced by 145 branches and 960 ATMs.

Apart from personal loans, it has a chain of pawn shops.

Bank Rakyat recorded a net profit of RM1.78bil last year. In 2014, the profit was RM1.96bil.

It is learnt that Bank Rakyat became more stringent in issuing new shares to prospective investors five years ago.

A check with Bank Rakyat’s customer service showed that it would only give out 500 shares to custo­mers taking up their first personal loan with the minimum amount of RM3,000.