UPWARD MOBILITY IN ACTION
Meritocracy and diversity flourish in Maybank. It’s a culture that serves the group well — and something that group president and CEO Abdul Farid Alias can personally vouch for.
The banker says he grew up poor; his late father was a “beat cop”, while his late mother was a housewife.
Mr Farid went to a Mara boarding school in Malaysia for poor families and won a scholarship there that sent him to the United States for his university education. The Mara Junior Science College is a group of boarding schools created by the People’s Trust Council, a Malaysian government agency. It learning facilities for bright students in local schools throughout the country.
Mr Farid’s father wanted him to be a lawyer but he was influenced by his older brother who studied accounting and became an accountant. He started his career at Maybank in 1992.
“There is upward mobility in Maybank,” says Mr Farid. “My predecessor (Abdul Wahid Omar) was the same: he came from a poor background.”
Mr Wahid, after concluding a three-year term as a government minister, became an Uber driver last June for three days because he wanted to understand the new business. Mr Wahid is now chairman of the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Permodalan Nasional Bhd.
Mr Farid says organisations such as Maybank give working people hope that meritocracy works. This month, Mohaiyani Shamsudin became the chairman of Maybank. Including Ms Mohaiyani, the 12-member Maybank board has three woman directors. The three big Singapore banks have a combined total of four woman directors.
Says Mr Farid: “In her words, if I can quote, she is the ‘chairman’ where the word means a position of responsibility with no limitation on adjectives like gender, or any other descriptions, and that she is the most qualified person to helm it and she has agreed to assume it.”
In March, Maybank announced — on International Women’s Day — that it would offer extended maternity leave of up to 365 days for eligible female employees, a likely first in the industry. Some Singapore companies have increased maternity leave beyond the mandatory four months to six months. Critically, the extended maternity leave will not constitute a break in an employee’s ob tenure, and she will be provided with medical and insurance coverage.
The men have not been forgotten — Maybank has also introduced a sabbatical leave policy for all staff. Eligible employees may take a career break “for a minimum duration of three months to a maximum of 24 months, with the guarantee and comfort of returning to work”.
In an interview with the Malaysian newspaper The Star, Mr Farid said he noticed that a lot of Maybank employees were getting sick. Many people fall ill when they retire and spend their retirement money on medical care, he said.
Apart from physical health, people get emotionally tired, said Mr Farid, adding that the sabbatical leave — which is unpaid — gives employees the opportunity to find themselves or do whatever they want. Some may not come back and some come back recharged, he said.
Ms Mohaiyani’s appointment as chairman led to several news articles looking at women in banking — not just in Malaysia but across the region.
Everyone recognises the importance of diversity — “not just gender diversity and parity — but also in terms of ethnicity, skills and educational discipline, work experience and so on”, Mr Farid said.
“Diversity gives us the richness of skills mix that will be absent otherwise. Without it, the decisions we make will be short of what could have been.”