KUALA LUMPUR: Bank Kerjasama Rakyat Malaysia Bhd (Bank Rakyat) has recorded its highest dividend in 10 years for its financial year 2025 (FY25), underscoring strong financial performance despite a challenging global environment.
Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives Minister, Steven Sim Chee Keong, announced an 18% dividend payout for Bank Rakyat’s FY25, with the total payout amounting to RM534.7mil.
“The commendable financial performance has enabled Bank Rakyat to optimise its capital position and sustain a high dividend payout, rewarding its members and stakeholders for their continued support,” he added.
The dividend payment will commence on April 16, 2026, benefiting a total of 783,324 members.
At the bank’s financial year-end briefing, it highlighted continued strong performance for 2025, driven by resilient domestic demand, robust household spending and ongoing diversification across both consumer and commercial segments.
According to Bank Rakyat’s chief executive officer Ahmad Shahril Mohd Shariff, the bank recorded improvements in both the consumer and commercial segments.
“This was driven largely by the bank’s diversification initiatives, which have enabled us to achieve performance broadly in line with industry averages in the non-personal financing portfolio.
“In addition, when the government implemented salary adjustments, this also created opportunities for us to grow our personal financing segment.”
Ahmad Shahril said the bank saw strong contributions from a balanced retail (personal financing) and business lending portfolio mix. “For our business portfolio, as we have revamped the end-to-end value chain of our business banking processes, we have been able to onboard higher-quality customers across all segments.
“While we remain committed to the small-medium enterprise (SME) segment, we are also increasingly engaging larger commercial corporations,” he told reporters yesterday.
Ahmad Shahril said market confidence in Bank Rakyat’s capabilities is growing, particularly in its ability to deliver financial services to larger corporate clients, which opens up further opportunities for the bank.
On the group’s financial performance, Ahmad Shahril said it recorded a gross profit of RM1.9bil for FY25, with a year-on-year (y-o-y) increase of 4.2% (RM75.8mil) compared to RM1.8bil in the previous year.
“This higher profit before tax and zakat was achieved through the group’s strong foundation and focus on core activities, supported by improved domestic economic conditions, while the group remains vigilant in facing the uncertain global economic outlook and challenging banking environment,” he said.
Ahmad Shahril explained that this strong performance was driven by growth in total assets, which increased 6.6% to RM131bil, supported by attractive offerings in the retail financing segment, a stronger emphasis on non-fund-based income, accelerated digitisation to penetrate the high and middle income segment, together with an overall improvement in asset quality.
The group’s core revenue also increased 2% to RM6.8bil, driven by strong growth in gross financing balance of 8.6% to RM93.3bil, exceeding the industry average.
The bank also remains well-positioned, underpinned by Malaysia’s stable economic outlook and proactive policy environment, amid geopolitical tensions and rising oil prices
On the bank’s cost management, Sim highlighted cost pressures from global factors such as energy prices are being addressed through efforts to reduce domestic and structural costs.
He said this includes streamlining bureaucracy under the ABCD strategy (accelerating productivity, bureaucracy reduction, capital accessibility, and developing market access), targeted to boost SMEs through accelerated productivity, reduced bureaucracy, capital accessibility, and digitalisation.
“Following discussions with financial institutions, there has been agreement to enhance SME financing offerings in the coming months, as well as to provide greater flexibility for companies facing financial stress.
“This includes case-by-case consideration for restructuring, refinancing, and, where necessary, moratorium support.”
While these measures are being implemented, he noted that it is important to acknowledge that the global environment remains challenging.
“Our approach, nonetheless, remains pragmatic through addressing cost pressures where possible, supporting affected sectors, while encouraging businesses to adapt, move up the value chain, and take advantage of emerging geopolitical and supply chain shifts where Malaysia has comparative strengths,” said Sim.
Meanwhile, Ahmad Shahril said that with the implementation of Bank Rakyat’s 2025 strategic plan, the bank has fully realised the benefits from the diversification of its portfolio, particularly in the business banking segment and secured financing segments such as Housing Financing-i, Vehicle Financing-i, and Pawnbroking-i.
Furthermore, the group’s deposit strategy and efforts to grow low-cost deposits have contributed to a 15.2% increase in Current-i Accounts, Savings-i Accounts, and Investment-i Accounts (CASAIA) to RM12.4bil, strengthening the CASAIA ratio by 129 basis points to 14.4%.
Bank Rakyat’s sustainable performance is also supported by a 30.8% increase in other operating income, reaching RM938.4mil, reflecting continuous efforts to diversify revenue sources.
With regard to Bank Rakyat’s infrastructure technology security penalty announced this year, Ahmad Shahril clarified the group’s stance.
“The penalty announced this year relates to an incident that occurred in 2024, and since then we have significantly increased our investment in strengthening our cybersecurity posture.”
He added that these improvements have been validated through multiple layers of independent assessments and are regularly reported to Bank Negara Malaysia.
“The fact that we are operating as normal today reflects the regulator’s confidence in the bank’s recovery and current controls.
“Fortunately, we have not experienced any further incidents since then,” he pointed out.”
Ahmad Shahril added that the bank continues to invest toward strengthening its infrastructure technology security framework, engaging with external experts to further support the initiative.
“We remain fully committed to ensuring that our customers’ data and personal information remain secure and protected at all times,” he assured.
