Maybank Private Purveyor of Innovation in the ASEAN Region

Maybank Private: Purveyor of Innovation in the ASEAN Region

by FeaturedGlobal Private BankerMagazineTop Stories

Probably no one understands the ASEAN market better than Maybank. Being an ASEAN based bank with on-ground operations in all 10 ASEAN nations, it is well-positioned to connect clients to and from this region with the rest of the world. Maybank Private has strategically expanded its business footprint aggressively across ASEAN and beyond. With three onshore booking centres firmly established in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, it offers HNW clients across the region direct access to regional and global investment opportunities. A solid proposition that allows Maybank Private to punch above its weight.

Having been bestowed 8 major awards at the Global Private Banking Innovation Awards 2020 by The Digital Banker only proves that Maybank Private is destined for bigger things to come. The awards include:

  • Winner, Best Private Bank Overal ASEAN
  • Winner, Most Innovative Business Model
  • Winner, Outstanding Young Private Banker – Lawrence Hoo
  • Winner, Outstanding Young Private Banker – Kenny Liu
  • Winner, Outstanding Young Private Banker – Nick Goh
  • Winner, Best Private Bank for Islamic Services (Maybank Islamic)
  • Highly Acclaimed, Outstanding Technology Implementation – Back End
  • Highly Acclaimed, Best Private Bank for Client Experience

The Global Private Banking Innovation Awards 2020 (GPB 2020) organised by The Digital Banker identifies the world’s best in class Private Banks, Family Offices and Wealth Managers. They are the elite performers when it comes to Fixed Income, Structured Investments, Family Office Services, Cash Management, Islamic Finance and more.

Among the highly reputable line up of judges who helped select this year’s award winners are respected subject-matter experts from companies such as Forrester, Protiviti and EY. Previous year’s judges include PwC, KPMG, and Fuji Xerox.

Being an ASEAN based bank with on-ground operations in all 10 ASEAN nations, Maybank is well-positioned to connect clients to and from this region with the rest of the world.

“Maybank Private is supported by a strong team of Investment Consultants with a good mix of backgrounds, each with a slight skew in forte, while being competent in all asset classes. The team’s approach of adopting a regional perspective on on-boarding, servicing and referring of eligible clients paves the way for a total banking experience free from any conflict or ‘territorial’ mindset. As a result, its customer’s interest is always at heart,” said Nirav Patel, Managing Director at The Digital Banker, the organiser of the Global Private Banking Innovation Awards in a statement.

Commenting on the award, Mr. Alvin Lee, Maybank’s Head of Group Wealth Management and Community Financial Services Singapore, remarked: “As a bank with a full-fledged ASEAN presence, we deployed a strategy to leverage our universal banking model across our network to offer unique value propositions. These awards bear testament to the hard work put in by our resilient and tight-knit team over the years as we build our brand name in the wealth management franchise in Asia.”

Highlighting the importance of providing clients with immeasurable value, Dato’ John Chong, Maybank’s Group CEO of Community Financial Services further added that, “Maybank plans to ride on this momentum to scale the business, accelerate Total Financial Assets and Investment penetration by strengthening our product propositions and leveraging strategic synergies across business divisions to provide our clients with impactful investment solutions.”

Maybank Private’s Digital Roadmap

Maybank Private’s innovative business model relies heavily on its digital roadmap that aims to elevate customer experience to a higher level. Its Avaloq Wealth Management System is at the heart of this strategy. Avaloq is a fully integrated front-middle-back office system which allows automation and straight-through processing to boost its business performance. It equips Client Advisors with a 360-degree view of their clients’ banking relationship with Maybank, allowing a more holistic approach to client management.

Complementing this is the Maybank Wealth Mobile App which empowers customers to manage their finances by providing a consolidated view of their financing portfolio with the Bank. Equipped with secure biometric technology, it provides direct access to their Client Advisors any time, any day. As a result of these digital initiatives, average investment fees per quarter has increased to a whopping 378% from 2015 to 2019.

Maybank Private adopts an open architecture products platform which enables them to screen and source for products from the best providers globally for its clients. Its mantra of ensuring that the best performing products, best investment advisory and best execution services are provided to its clients all the time is keeping the team in good stead as it navigates the competitive market of the ASEAN region.

Maybank plans to ride on this momentum to scale the business, accelerate Total Financial Assets and Investment penetration by strengthening our product propositions.

Best ASEAN Private Bank

Leveraging on Maybank Group’s strength and presence in ASEAN and key financial centres, Maybank Private has strategically expanded its business footprint aggressively across ASEAN and beyond.

Maybank Private has a deep and extensive presence in Malaysia with Private Wealth Centres in four major cities, namely Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Kuching and Kota Kinabalu and access to over 350 Maybank’s branch network across the country.

Private Wealth London Desk is also a strategic gateway to European markets. The UK has seen a growing number of HNW investors from Southeast Asia. Being one of the most matured financial centres in the world, Private Wealth London Desk serves as a strategic gateway for Maybank Private to connect its clients closer to opportunities in the European markets. The onshore presence of its Private Wealth London office and relationship managers ensure all client’s needs are taken care of seamlessly. Cross-border offerings such as overseas mortgage loans for London properties is one of Maybank Private’s key value propositions.

Maybank’s ASEAN/ASIAN Network is vast:

  • Malaysia – 354 retail branches, 6 investment banking branches
  • Singapore – 18 retail branches, 2 investment banking branches
  • Indonesia – 374 retail branches, 11 investment banking branches
  • Philippines – 73 retail branches, 1 investment banking branch
  • Cambodia – 21 retail branches
  • Pakistan – 1,598 retail branches (via associate MCB Bank Ltd)
  • Vietnam – 165 retail branches (via associate An Binh Bank)
  • Thailand – 30 investment banking branches
  • Greater China – 5 retail branches, 1 investment banking branch
  • Brunei – 2 retail branches
  • Laos – 2 retail branches
  • Myanmar – 1 retail branch
  • Dubai – 1 Islamic branch

Over 60 years, Maybank Group has focused on building deep and solid relationships with its corporate and individual clients across all the ASEAN countries. This has provided Maybank Private the foundation to leverage on these relationships and entrench it further by providing additional value propositions. With this advantage, its number of clients has grown exponentially. Total Financial Assets (TFA) have also grown to US$ 14.2 billion, a CAGR of 30% over a five year period.

***

>> To read more about this story and other exclusive features about the global private banking landscape, download the latest issue of Global Private Banker Magazine HERE.

 

 

Maybank: Grooming SMEs for growth through digital innovations

Maybank: Grooming SMEs for growth through digital innovations

by Sponsored Content

In Singapore, SMEs employ an estimated 65% of the country’s workforce and contribute close to 50% of GDP. Currently, about one in five SMEs in Singapore has a banking relationship with Maybank, which includes both the Retail SME (RSME) and Commercial Banking segments.

Over the next three years, its SME Banking revenue sources will gravitate towards non-lending income as Maybank offers improved treasury, wealth, keyman insurance risks, business management and cross-border services delivered from digital and traditional platforms. The bank aims to understand and deliver what the SME ecosystem truly needs and the way they want it delivered. For Maybank, SME Banking should be an entrepreneurial unit, by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs.

Marc Leong, Head of SME Banking in Singapore, said, “We are trying to move more into fee-based income as we realised there’s always asset risk. And SMEs need these services, so we are offering them to our customers.”

In the past year, SME Banking has recorded over 100% new business growth in areas like treasury services and trade finance. As at December 2018, non interest-based income made up 10 per cent of Maybank’s RSME segment, consisting of treasury services, wealth instruments, keyman insurance, transactional banking or cash management, and cross-border banking services. Over the next three years, SME Banking’s revenue sources will focus on non-lending income, targeting to double its contribution from 10% to 20%.

“We are trying to move more into fee-based income as we realised there’s always asset risk. And SMEs need these services, so we are offering them to our customers.”

The ASEAN Edge

As the only bank in Singapore with presence in all 10 ASEAN countries, Maybank is well-poised to connect businesses and opportunities to support local companies’ expansion abroad, specifically venture to Malaysia given its strong affiliation as well as connectivity in ASEAN.

The Singapore-Malaysia trade corridor is extremely important for Singapore businesses, capturing
S$108 billion worth of bilateral trade in 2017. Singapore SMEs can benefit from Maybank’s strong network, presence and capabilities in Malaysia.

History of SME Banking Segment

Maybank SME & Commercial Banking prides itself on having a track record of service excellence in business banking, and has seen many homegrown businesses through their growth phase to achieve international expansion. The bank has also journeyed with countless business customers and gone on to serve their second and third generation of successors.

Retail SME Banking was formalised as a segment in 2014 to target the small businesses from start-up to growing stages with turnover of up to $20 million per annum. Commercial Banking segment focuses on clients with an annual company turnover of up to S$120 million.

The value proposition of the Retail SME segment is making its products and services accessible to small businesses, such as simplified and pre-packaged bundles that strip away financial jargons and complexities for this group.

Alvin Lee, Head of Community Financial Services Singapore and Group Wealth Management at Maybank, explained: “The RSME segment is relatively new in Maybank. It was started five years ago to target small businesses with turnover of up to S$20 million. Since its launch, its customer pool has grown by about 60-70 per cent.”

Helping Clients to Go Digital

Maybank Group has been investing in various digital and data analytics capabilities. The nature and operations of the bank paves the way for a huge data advantage, which puts Maybank in a strategic position to improve its customer engagements and experiences as the Group connects meaningfully into the new SME ecosystem.

Maybank Singapore is one of the industry partners offering “SMEs Start Digital” package: http://info.maybank2u.com.sg/smebanking/

Maybank Singapore has made in-roads in providing digital solutions to help automate its SMEs core business processes. Through SME Start Digital Programme, it subsidises up to two digital modules for its customers: (i) Digital accounting, (ii) Human Resource management system, (iii) Digital marketing, (iv) Digital transactions, and (v) Cybersecurity solutions.

Maybank Singapore has made in-roads in providing digital solutions to help automate its SMEs core business processes.

With government-led digital connectivity and national programmes, retail banks are in a better position to compete:

  • MyInfo and the upcoming Corporate MyInfo: Centralised individual and corporate data storage backed by government. Provides single, verified authentication framework on business and its owners.
  • PayNow Corporate: Enhanced fund transfer service that allows a company to send and receive payment to/from business partners by linking SGD Corporate account with Unique Entity Number (UEN).
  • Open Banking APIs: MAS was the first Asia Pacific regulator to release open banking guidelines and design principles for banking sector APIs. The concept allows banks to open up customers’ full financial data (e.g. balances, lending, AUM to other banks).

E-Invoicing and SGQR

In January 2018, Maybank partnered Financio and gave access to fully-subsidised cloud-accounting software at entry level to its small business customers who sign up for a current account. This solution largely benefits the start-ups and small businesses as most of them may not have access to proper accounting system, often relying on manual and Excel-based bookkeeping. With Financio, the bank now empowers its customers with digitalised accounting system and helps businesses stay on top of their finances. In Q1 2019, 1 in 2 new customers opted for Financio.

To scale up its service offerings, Maybank recently collaborated with Dr. Anywhere, an application-based healthcare provider that allows one to set up a doctor consultation in minutes via a video call. Through this connection, Maybank’s customers can add value to their employee welfare package whilst benefitting from lesser downtime and operational disruptions as common illnesses can easily be consulted at the office premises with medication delivered in hours.

Being at the heart of Singapore community

Existing Retail SME staff are put through training programmes to pick up new skill sets, such as a proprietary curriculum Maybank FutureReady Certification Course, and short-term courses (on trade finance) at a local university.

Maybank sponsored the Millet World Community mobile application to enable SME business representatives to connect and network with one another.

Maybank SME Banking also sponsored Brands for Good awards for 2018 and 2019. According to Marc Leong, “Keeping to our credo of humanising financial services, Maybank stands for fair pricing and needs-based client advisory, and we are committed to delivering long-term positive value to the communities that we serve.” Another thrust of SME Banking’s brand promise is building the trust element. The community and customers’ trust in Maybank for close to 60 years, allows it to forge strong relationships and partnerships, walking customers through their entrepreneurship journey. As a universal bank, Maybank can offer additional value and sophistication when SMEs graduate to larger corporates and public listings.

As Maybank continues to invest heavily in its business and relationship managers; recruiting, mentoring, training and developing them, expect the bank to groom more entrepreneurs into greater success.

A paragon of excellence

For its unwavering efforts in grooming more entrepreneurs and its excellent performance in different areas of retail banking, Maybank bagged several major awards at the Global Retail Banking Innovation Awards 2019. Other than being named “Best Retail Bank Malaysia”, the bank was also declared winner for Best Digital Wallet of the Year and Best Graduate Employment Program, in addition to being recognised as Highly Acclaimed in Excellence in SME Banking, Debit Card of the Year, Best Bank for Millennials, Best Digital Payments Initiative, Best Mobile Payments Service, Best Internet Banking Initiative, Best Customised Mobile Banking and Best Lifestyle App.

 

>> To read more about this story and other exclusive features about the digital banking landscape, download the latest issue of The Digital Banker Magazine HERE.