KUALA LUMPUR 02 MAY 2018. RHB group managing director Datuk Khairussaleh Ramli, (second left), and SME Corp chief executive officer Datuk Dr Hafsah Hashim (second right), at the digital signing of the memorandum of understanding between RHB Bank & SME Corp in Lanai Kijang, Bank Negara Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur. (NSTP pic by MOHAMAD SHAHRIL BADRI SAALI)
KUALA LUMPUR: RHB Banking Group expects its collaboration with SME Corporation Malaysia (SME Corp) to contribute to its year-end goal of raising its small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) market share to 9.2 per cent from 9 per cent currently.
This collaboration is on the back of RHB becoming JomPAY’s strategic partner by signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with SME Corp to drive Malaysian SME towards cashless society.
"This MoU will also see RHB Bank appointing SME Corp as a JomPAY agent, the first of such appointment in the country, to champion cashless initiatives amongst SMEs. Through this collaboration, SME will be able to adopt e-payments by leveraging on RHB Bank’s REFLEX online cash management system and other RHB Bank digital enablers,” said RHB group managing director Datuk Khairussaleh Ramli.
"This collaboration will of course help us towards enlarging our SME business and growing our SME market share and SME loans to 9.2 and 9.6 per cent respectively.”
He stressed however that the collaboration with SME Corp goes beyond the bank’s SME agenda alone.
"These initiatives and systems are designed to fuel the government's efforts in increasing the efficiency of the country's payment systems, in line with Bank Negara’s Financial Sector Blueprint 2011-2020. A key initiative under this agenda is to reduce the number of cheques from 207 million to 100 per year," he said.
"On top of that, we also see this collaboration in helping strengthen our asset side as well help increase our liquidity through increase deposits. We have built a digital ecosystem through our REFLEX platform and by getting these new SMEs into this platform, it will further enrich the existing ecosystem we have built.”
REFLEX is already hosting some 74,000 customers on its platform as of February 2018, a majority of which are from the SME side, according to Khairussaleh.
RHB’s SME loans share stood at nine per cent and 8.7 per cent, respectively as of the end of 2017.
The bank is targeting to have a total of 20 per cent of its group loans to be contributed by SME financing by 2020.
JomPAY is Malaysia's national bill payment scheme established and operated by Payments Network Malaysia Sdn Bhd (PayNet).
Bank Negara is PayNet’d single largest shareholder, with 11 Malaysian banks as joint shareholders.
