TAIPING: None of the 4,500-odd employees of the EON Bank group will be retrenched under its ongoing merger and rationalisation exercise, said its deputy group chief executive officer Abdul Jamel Pawanteh.
Under the exercise which began last year, many of the 150 branch offices of EON Bank Berhad and EON Finance Berhad will be merged, providing integrated banking and financing services called the “One-stop Banking Centre”.
“There will be no manpower cut and if we have an excess of staff, we will retrain them to handle new tasks,” he told reporters after opening the group’s 4th “One-stop Banking Centre” in Kamunting here yesterday, which was formerly an EON Finance Berhad branch.
The other outlets are in Sitiawan, Lahad Datu and Muar.
“Customers can now have both financing and banking services,” he said.
The group has a total of 49 EON Finance and 96 EON Bank branches nationwide apart from two Malaysian International Merchant Bankers Bhd outlets – one in Kuala Lumpur and the other in Penang.
Also present at the launch were group adviser Datuk Zulkifli Ali, group individual banking deputy CEO Albert Lau Yiong, group enterprise banking deputy CEO Peter Y.C. Chow and Eon Bank Group Kamunting branch manager See Yoke Keong.
Abdul Jamel said some branches would be exempted from the merger exercise as they were located in small buildings.
On EON Bank’s “Free For Life” credit card campaign, he said that since it was launched in August last year, some 220,000 customers had signed up.
On EON Bank’s low finance interest rates, Abdul Jamel said this was in line with the current market trend.
“We try to lead the market,” he said. The group is charging 3.3% interest rate on car loans and 2.5% (applicable during first year of repayment) on housing loans.
To a question, Abdul Jamel said EON Bank provided car loans to all and not only national cars as perceived by the public.
Abdul Jamel said EON Bank also provided loans to second-hand cars and this facility represented 20% of its car financing portfolio.
