KUALA LUMPUR: The country’s largest lender Malayan Banking Bhd
(Maybank) remains cautiously optimistic on its outlook and will continue to pursue “disciplined” growth amid improving economic conditions of its home markets of Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.
Group chief financial officer Shafiq Abdul Jabbar said with Asean having over 600 million people and with Indonesia making up near to half of this, Indonesia remained a long term game for the bank.
“We are very focused there, the business is admittedly not yielding the return that we would like, and we would like to bring this up to at least a double-digit return on equity (ROE) in the mid to longer term,” he said at a press conference here yesterday.
The strategies that the lender will employ in Indonesia include portfolio rebalancing.
“Malaysian and Singaporean corporates wanting to go into Indonesia ... we have these relationships and we will follow these clients in.
“Our presence in Indonesia also very much resonates with the younger generation.”
He said the bank intended to roll out the new version of its MAE application (app) in Indonesia, ahead of its other two markets.
“We also want to upgrade the app in Malaysia and Singapore but we are prioritising Indonesia,” he added.
He said the impact will be “big” if a turnaround occurs in Indonesia.
Maybank yesterday reported a net profit of RM2.7bil on revenue of RM15.8bil for its fourth quarter ended Dec 31, 2025 compared to a net profit of RM2.5bil on revenue of RM16.7bil for the same period a year earlier.
For the full fiscal year ended Dec 31, 2025 (FY25), the lender made a net profit of RM10.5bil on revenue of RM66.4bil compared with a net profit of RM10.1bil against a revenue of RM68.9bil in FY24.
The board has declared a full cash second interim dividend of 33 sen per share, bringing total dividends for FY25 to 63 sen per share, translating into a dividend payout ratio of 72.4% and a dividend yield of 6%.
Shafiq noted that the payout ratio had been higher in the past but the cash component of the payouts during these years were actually “quite small.”
“Right now what you are seeing is a 100% cash, payouts in FY23, FY24 and FY25 have been all cash, which means that there has been no further reinjection of dividends back into the bank, everything actually goes out.
“We feel that this is the right way of doing things, we will work out how much capital we need and the rest we will give back to shareholders.
“We feel roughly about one third of capital being retained for future growth is sustainable into the long term,” Shafiq added.
The lender has provided guidance for FY26 including a ROE of at least 11.8%, group loans growth of 4% to 5%, a net interest margin (NIM) of 2.05% to 2.10 % and a net credit charge off (NCC) rate of about 20 basis points.
In FY25, Maybank reported a ROE of 11.7% against a guidance of at least 11.3%, a NIM of 2.05% and a NCC rate of eight basis points.
Its loan growth however came in at 1.7% in FY25, below its guidance of circa 3%.
Maybank said its now concluded M25+ strategy plan continued to drive strong performance in FY25, delivering broad-based growth across priority segments.
It said wealth management remained a key growth engine, with total wealth fees rising 27.9% year-on-year (y-o-y) to RM1.50bil and Islamic wealth investment assets under management expanding 26.7% to RM18.22bil.
Group community financial services or GCFS reported net operating income of RM17.01bil for FY25, compared with RM17.10bil in the previous year while group global banking or GGB delivered a strong performance for FY25, recording a 13% y-o-y increase in its pre-tax profit to RM7.93bil, it said.
Maybank Singapore recorded a rise in pre-tax profit which increased 1.3% to S$711.30mil supported by stronger net fund-based income cushioning the impact of a non-interest income slowdown, higher overheads and lower impairment allowance write-back, it said.
Maybank Indonesia meanwhile recorded an increase in profit after tax and minority interests increasing 48.5% y-o-y to 1.66 billion rupiah, driven by better cost management and continued reduction in loan loss provisions.
