KUALA LUMPUR: Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank) aims to disburse RM50 billion in mortgage loans and another RM35 billion loans to small and medium enterprises in the next three years, its chief executive officer Datuk Abdul Farid Alias said.
Farid said Maybank is hoping for a higher approval rate of 80 per cent for eligible applicants.
“On the mortgage side, as at December 31, 2018, we have in our book RM87.5 billion in residential and non-residential loans from a total of RM500 billion in loans. We disbursed about RM12.2 billion in new loans and mortgages last year,” he told reporters after Maybank’s annual general meeting today.
“We plan to disburse RM50 billion in the next three years in housing loans. Our approval rate for eligible applicants as at March 2019 is at 80 per cent in comparison to the entire industry’s approval rate of 70 per cent.
“Our plan for the next three years is to also disburse about RM35 billion in SME loans in support of the economy,” he added.
For SMEs, Farid said Maybank’s current loan size stood at RM41.1 billion, comprising RM24 billion for business banking and RM17.1 billion for retail SMEs.
On the banking sector outlook, Farid expects Maybank to still be able to perform within expectations this year, with focus on its major markets in Singapore and Indonesia despite the economic headwinds expected.
“Malaysia is going to grow at 4.7 per cent, Singapore at 1.8 per cent and Indonesia will grow at 5.1 per cent GDP wise with a lot of it driven by domestic demand.
“We expect the net external demand will be muted due to US-China trade tension. But we think we will be able to grow in relation to the country’s growth as inflation is still very low in all 3 markets so conditions to do well in these markets are still there,” he added.
Farid said Maybank will maintain its robust risk management practices as well as on-going recovery efforts to ensure that asset quality remain sound.
“Liquidity is another key area that we will emphasise as it provides us a solid foundation to withstand external headwinds. In line with this, we will prioritise maintaining stable liquidity risk indicators, especially in view of the impending NSFR adoption effective 2020.
“We will be ensuring a robust capital position – something that we have already been doing well over the years, and which has placed us among the best capitalised banks in the region,” he said.
Maybank also plans to roll out new digital products and services.
“This will be complemented by concerted efforts across all levels within Maybank to enhance the use of data driven analytics so that we can understand customers’ behaviour and needs better to effectively serve them as their Digital Bank of Choice,” Farid said.