Growing Giant

President Director Tigor M. Siahaan leads CIMB Niaga by germinating ideas and encouraging young innovators to make a difference. Edith Emeralda writes

wenty years, four cities and one bank into his professional banking life, Tigor M. Siahaan is now the new President Director of CIMB Niaga. “I want to shift my focus to Indonesia,” Tigor said as regards his move after a long time working in Citibank. “There is so much potential for the bank, given its 61 years of presence.”

CIMB Niaga is the second-largest private bank in Indonesia and the fifth-largest overall in Indonesia, he further explained, while Citibank is spread out over around a hundred countries. CIMB Niaga started out as a private commercial bank that helped support Indonesia’s then-young economy.

It went through a lot of peaks and troughs in the ensuing six decades, with the latest a big merger in 2008 with Lippo Bank. Tigor told us that the two banks’ cultures have become quite blended since then, with products and customers now covering one end of the financial spectrum to the other—from business to private, bonds to credits, and more.

However, the bank’s innovative culture has been growing for quite some time—after all, the bank had the first ATM in Indonesia. “We have [seen] so many innovations in terms of customer service and experience,” said Tigor. “For example, we launched Rekpon or Rekening Ponsel, our phone banking service, three years ago—which was Asia’s first e-wallet that uses your cellphone number in place of your account number.”

But the optimum level has still not been reached for Tigor, which is the exciting part about his job. “It’s all about working well with the team and trying to find the right balance,” he said. “Because speed is of the essence nowadays, we need to stay ahead of the game.”

Working and innovating together on the digital front is CIMB-X, which is a group of four to five young bankers who have been working together for around two years. “They deal with startups, financial technology and their own respective communities,” Tigor said, “I learn so much from these bright young minds to help build the bank.”

Tigor also learns from mentoring and interacting with young entrepreneurs through Endeavour Indonesia. “There are a lot of young, upcoming, smart, gifted and hungry entrepreneurs who need guidance,” said Tigor. “I mentor them through this organisation in terms of challenges they faced: financing and funding, strategy, organisation, target marketing and more on business strategies in trying to scale up.”

Leadership, in Tigor’s view, is to hire people who are smarter, better, and have different ideas than oneself. He tries to avoid group mindset and mentality and thus values differences in opinion and encourage people speaking up respectfully. “Before anything else, however, there is integrity—which is what I seek when hiring people,” said Tigor. “I learned a lot about integrity and perspectives from my father.”

It all boils down to one question he asked at the end of the day: how to make a difference. “Whether it’s to the bank, to my family, to my team, or the society around me,” Tigor said as he closed our talk. “If you’re making a difference, that’s what counts.”