AmBank aims to be the preferred bank of SMEs
KUALA LUMPUR: AmBank (M) Bhd aspires to become the bank of choice for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
“We have, for the past years, reconfigured our business banking segment to match the needs of the SME market. Most banks are divided into either corporate or retail. We want to occupy that space in between,” said AMMB Holdings Bhd group chief executive officer Datuk Sulaiman Mohd Tahir.
“For the most part, banks that have been successful in the SME space are foreign banks. AmBank would like to be the bank of choice for SMEs and I believe we are already on our way there.”
He said the SME segment was particularly attractive to the group, given that successful SMEs did not remain stagnant.
They grow to become mid to large capitalised companies that would continue doing business with AmBank.
“In 2017, the bank disbursed RM6.14 billion loans to SMEs, 30.6 per cent more than RM4.6 billion in 2017. This was a remarkable growth as three years ago, we started from zero growth,” he said at a media briefing, here, yesterday.
“We want to maintain this double-digit growth within the SME lending space.”
AmBank’s current market share of SME lending is seven per cent.
It did not meet its target of approving RM7 billion worth of loans for SMEs and related businesses in the financial year ended March 31 2018.
“We have not hit RM7 billion but our SME loan business is still growing higher than the industry average. That said, we were not able to hit the target because of external factors last year.
“We had expected the economy to pick up after the 14th General Election but what happened was, Bank Negara Malaysia revised the gross domestic product growth multiple times. We hope we can maintain the double-digit growth in SME lending this year but that is also up to forces beyond our control, like the economy,” added Sulaiman.