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KUALA LUMPUR (April 8): The last few weeks have indeed been trying for financial institutions, with the banking crises in the US and Europe creating much market volatility for the industry worldwide. Adding to that are concerns over how much longer key central banks will continue raising interest rates to bring down inflation, even as fears grow over the possibility of a global recession.
Despite the headwinds, Datuk Khairussaleh Ramli, group president and chief executive officer of Malaysia’s largest banking group by assets, Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank), is a picture of calm during an interview with The Edge.
He speaks for close to two hours about how Maybank is in a strong position to ride out any turbulence and its plans to grow organically under its medium-term corporate strategy known as M25+, among other things.
“At the end of the day, things are fluid, but we do expect to see growth in our home markets. We are more cautiously optimistic that the landscape is not as bad as what had been expected.
“Yes, interest rates are going up — and yes, we can benefit from that and from a financing assets point of view, but it’s only for the short term before the deposit rates adjust themselves. However, there are so many other levers that we have in terms of non-interest income, insurance business, wealth business. I guess, that is the beauty of being a big group — we have different levers that we can pull even in a difficult environment,” he says, in his first interview with the media since taking the helm in May last year.
According to Khairussaleh, the big challenge for the group now is to move from being “good” to “great”. Underlining this ambition is the M25+ strategy, which runs till the end of 2025.
Read more in our cover story in The Edge Weekly’s April 10 edition.
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