PETALING JAYA: Malayan Banking Bhd
(Maybank) remains positive about its outlook for 2024, guided by its M25+ corporate strategy.
The M25+ strategy involves adopting Agile@Scale, different methods to enhance collaborations while looking at ways to differentiate its solutions and propositions for customers.
In its annual report, president and group chief executive officer Datuk Khairussaleh Ramli said efforts were injected into driving customer-centricity, leveraging next-gen technologies and analytics in methods that go beyond banking.
“To empower our customers and enable them to fulfil their journeys, we are investing about 77% of our M25+ budget of up to RM4.5bil, specifically on building our front-end digital solutions, Tech-for-Business and back-end technology infrastructure – Tech-For-Tech, to provide hyper-personalised solutions and drive our overall business,” he said.
The bank has committed RM577mil in investments for M25+, of which 87% is for Tech-for-Business and 10% for Tech-for-Tech.
According to Khairussaleh, to fully unlock the potential of the M25+ strategy, the bank will need to continue building its digital capabilities as well as a culture of innovation to drive its next phase of growth.
In particular, the country’s economy is anticipated to grow faster at 4.4% in 2024 from 3.7% in 2023, driven by a rebound in exports amid sustained consumer spending and investment growth.
He said three interrelated strategic pillars were identified, which included customer facing, building internal capabilities and adding value for its retail and business customers.
“As part of efforts to double down on our regionalisation strategy, we are rolling out digital solutions in our different home markets, adjusting these as far as possible to be optimally conducive to the local environment.
“To maintain our leading edge in terms of customer-centricity, digitalisation and sustainability, we will have to invest continuously in our people, processes and programmes,” he said.
This in return, will help to drive innovation across all its operations as the bank completes its transformation into an agile and buoyant entity.
He noted that data insights indicated there are untapped opportunities to enhance up-selling and cross-selling opportunities, as well as improve digital engagements across retail and non-retail segments.
“Thus, we will intensify our efforts to deepen our relationships with existing and new customers, while leveraging our ecosystem play endeavours and rolling out digital solutions to meet end-to-end customer lifestyle and business needs,” he said.
In anticipation of a better Asean economic growth, he said the bank is poised to capitalise on growth in areas like wealth management, cash management and bancassurance.
“We will look at broadening our market penetration in the non-retail segments, especially among small and medium enterprises and mid-market companies.
“For the current financial year, we have set a headline key performance indicator for return on equity of 11%,” he pointed out.
