Alliance Financial Group targets modest loans growth for FY18

CEO Joel Kornreich said the banking group continues to deliver good financial results because of its strategy of focusing on risk adjusted returns, effective risk management measures and optimisation of balance sheet mix.

KUALA LUMPUR: Alliance Financial Group Holdings Bhd (AFG) is targeting a modest growth for its loans segment for the financial year ending March 31, 2018 (FY18).

Its Group Chief Executive Officer, Joel Kornreich, said AFG's loans growth would be modest because several portfolios were not very efficient.

"But we believe that our latest strategic initiative, the Alliance One Account, which we launched last month, will be among the key drivers in meeting our FY18 loans growth," he said.

He was speaking to reporters after launching AFG's first mobile foreign remittance application, "Alliance Cash2Home" here.  

Kornreich said AFG expected to incur some RM94 million in expenditure related to its transformation programme for FY18, which included enhancing its sales, marketing and distribution channels, including technology and innovation.

He said AFG was on track to achieve its target of RM650 million net profit after tax by FY22, resulting from the bank''s transformation exercise.  

On the Alliance Cash2Home application, Kornreich said, it was the first mobile application to offer paperless account opening and remittance services, eliminating the need to go to a bank branch.  

"This application is primarily for foreign workers in Malaysia, and was designed with the needs of both employers and employees in mind," he said.  

He said the application offered a combination of facial recognition biometrics with optical character recognition, allowing a secure, effective and convenient way to perform mass account opening on employers'' premises.  

"It enables the seamless verification of foreign workers' identity during account opening, thus eliminating the need for employees to go to the bank to set up their accounts.

"We are targeting to secure as many of them as soon as possible, and we hope to engage with thousands of companies to use this application as it ushers in a new mobile banking user experience that is both simple and secure," he said.  - Bernama