This article was originally published in the Brand Finance Malaysia 100 2023.
Interview with Abdul Sani Abdul Murad
Despite the challenging economic landscape in the past two years, RHB's brand value is growing again, and its brand strength rank is improving, driven by improvements in the perceptions of customer service and availability. What big successes have you experienced that you can pin this improvement on?
For us, it is simple. We continuously innovate and simplify our processes in keeping with our brand promise of delivering fast, simple and seamless solutions to help our customers achieve their goals.
For our SME clients, we have a few solutions. One of these is the SME Online Financing solution, where our customers need only to submit two documents without visiting the bank physically when applying for a loan, and be notified of their loan approval status within two working days.
We have also introduced the RHB Reflex Premium Plus, an all-in-one financial management and business solution that helps SMEs digitise their business for greater efficiency. Additionally, we launched the RHB #JomSapot digital platform to enable SMEs to promote their business at no cost.
For our retail customers, we have enhanced our RHB Mobile Banking app with more features for our customers’ convenience. We also introduced Asia Pacific's first recycled plastic card, the RHB Visa WWF Debit Card-i, to support marine conservation. We have rolled out RHB Money Chat financial talk series to help educate Malaysians on financial literacy.
Consequently, we have been recognised with several awards including:
• Best Retail Bank in Malaysia, Best Digital Ecosystem Initiative, and Best SME Loan by the Asian Banker.
• Best Debit Card Initiative, Best Mortgage Offering, and Excellence in SME Banking by the Retail Banker International.
Our continued support to our customers has been reflected in our net promoter score ("NPS"), where we ranked 3rd place in 2022 among Malaysian banks.
RHB is a strong advocate of sustainability. What role does sustainability play in helping to drive your brand promise of “Together We Progress”?
Our brand promise of “Together we Progress” and purpose statement of “Making Progress Happen for Everyone” empowers us to take the right actions to ensure continuous sustainable growth, and manage sustainability-related risks, for the bank and its stakeholders. To do this, we have a robust Sustainability strategy and Roadmap where we integrate sustainability matters into our business strategies and decision-making processes.
To improve the lives and livelihoods of our customers, we elevate our financial capital and social and relationship capital by providing products and services and delivering excellent customer service. We do this by creating positive impacts through our lending, capital markets, wealth management, deposits, investment, asset management and insurance businesses.
In addition, we proactively promote financial inclusion by providing access to financial products and services to targeted segments, including the youth and underserved, and businesses.
We are strong supporters of the SMEs in their journey towards building sustainable businesses. One of our aspirations is to mobilise RM20 billion in sustainable financial services by 2026. To-date, we have provided RM14 billion, or 73% of our 2026 target.
“Our brand promise empowers us to take the right actions to ensure continuous sustainable growth, and manage sustainability-related risks, for the bank and its stakeholders. We continuously innovate and simplify our processes in keeping with our brand promise of delivering fast, simple and seamless solutions to help our customers achieve their goals.”
How do you retain customer loyalty despite the challenging economic environment?
Our three-year corporate strategy roadmap of “Together We Progress 24” (“TWP24”) centres around three objectives – to be everyone’s primary bank, prioritise customer’s experience, and drive quality growth.
The TWP24 places emphasis on having a strong customer-first culture, and continues to enhance customer-centric ideation.
One example is our RHB Loyalty Rewards Programme, where our customers gain loyalty points across multiple banking facilities when they save, spend and invest with RHB. They can use these loyalty points to redeem attractive rewards.
We also have various corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes to enrich and empower communities, especially children, young adults and businesses. These initiatives are a reflection of the shared values between RHB and its customers.
One of these is the RHB #JomBiz that helps SMEs grow their businesses efficiently through training and funding. Since its launch in 2022, we have supported 141 SMEs in their journey. We also have RHB #JomSapot, a digital platform for SMEs to help SMEs with their branding and promote their businesses.
In 2023, we organised the RHB Clean-a-thon, Malaysia’s first gotong-royong series with the local community, at Sungai Tiang, Bagan Datuk. The RHB Clean-a-thon was attended by over 400 participants.
