Maybank, Malaysia’s largest bank and the fourth largest in Southeast Asia by assets ($227 billion as of 2023), aims to stay ahead in a rapidly changing retail banking landscape. With consumer, small and medium enterprises (SME), and business banking generating approximately 60% of Maybank’s total revenue, the bank recognises that growth relies on adapting to evolving customer demands.

To achieve this transformation, Maybank launched the M25+ strategy in October 2022 to drive meaningful differentiation in key strategic thrusts and accelerate the development of key capabilities. The strategy aims to enhance the bank’s customer service, digital capabilities, regional presence, sustainability practices, and Islamic banking services. Maybank is focused on building a digital ecosystem through value-added services and personalising the customer journey.

Cultivating a culture of innovation and agility

Maybank’s M25+ strategy, focusing on digital innovation and customer-centricity, is central to how the bank engages with its customers. Siew Chan Cheong, group chief strategy and transformation officer, elaborated, “We are investing in digital services,” Maybank has invested up to MYR 4.5 billion ($1 billion) since 2020, with 77% allocated to technology, including a more agile core banking platform.

Siew emphasised, “We are also intensifying customer services through our front-liners." This dual approach, combined with the MAE app’s lifestyle focus, is a key driver of Maybank’s growth. "Profit and revenue are not the first priorities," he stated. "The main question is, 'Have we spoken to our customers? How are we helping them and solving their pain points?'" Maybank attributes improvements from their agile approach in reducing development for new features from 18 months to six. Siew emphasised that he wants to ensure the front-line personnel is customer-centric. “We must have a fail-fast mindset so that we operate more like a technology company," Siew emphasised.

M25+ has driven significant growth in Maybank’s digitisation efforts, with digital sales contributing 78% to total sales and a 229% surge in digital transactions over the past five years. Maybank aims to exceed 85% digital sales penetration rate by 2025.

According to TABInsights’ BankQuality survey, which assesses customer satisfaction with their retail banks, Maybank has been the most recommended and most selected main retail bank in Malaysia for the past two years. The bank also leads in delivering customer-focused digital services, particularly in mobile and internet banking, with a claimed share of 55% and 47%, respectively, in June 2024, and 8.7 million active digital users.

Innovation through lifestyle solutions and strategic partnerships

Siew noted: "The market is very active, with many new entrants." Central to Maybank’s innovative response in the face of intense competition is the Maybank Anytime, Everyone (MAE) platform.

Relaunched in 2020, the MAE app serves as a comprehensive lifestyle platform central to its growth strategy. MAE extends beyond traditional banking by offering instant personal and mortgage loan approvals, investment options, and lifestyle features such as flight and movie ticket purchases, as well as carbon footprint tracking. Maybank has also partnered with real estate developer Sime Darby, enabling property searches and mortgage applications directly within the MAE app to streamline the customer journey. New features are introduced monthly, underscoring Maybank’s fast-paced development.

In November 2024, Maybank launched its lifestyle-centric branch, MSpace@Maybank Tower in Singapore, to make the branch experience more pleasant and accessible by integrating lifestyle and community elements, such as a café and event space for workshops and events, into the banking space.

This lifestyle-centric approach reflects Maybank’s commitment to meeting broader customer lifestyle needs. “We’re looking at the needs of the customer beyond banking,” Siew explained. For a customer who uses Maybank as the primary bank, he noted, “most transactions will be related to lifestyle. Through that information, we have built a model to understand customer need."

Supporting small and medium enterprises through an ecosystem

Maybank has placed a strong focus on empowering SMEs through targeted solutions and strategic partnerships. “We discovered that many SMEs face challenges in their daily operations," Siew explained. One such solution is Maybank’s ‘myImpact’ SME programme, a group-wide initiative most recently launched in Singapore in November 2024.

The ‘myimpact’ SME programme is an ecosystem that offers SMEs financial support and business advisory services. It focuses on helping SMEs make the transition to sustainable practices based on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles. This includes collaborating with Gprnt, a climate-tech platform to track carbon credits, and ESGpedia, a platform to track ESG data, to provide SMEs with tools for sustainability reporting and compliance. Maybank’s commitment to partnerships extends beyond sustainability, to forming strategic partnerships with fintechs. “They are competitors but also collaborate with us," Siew said. This approach is evident in Maybank’s recent collaboration with Funding Societies, a Southeast Asian digital financing platform that serves micro-small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Since 2015, Funding Societies claims to have disbursed over $4 billion in financing to over 100,000 businesses. While Funding Societies partners with foreign banks such as HSBC that provides credit facilities, Maybank is the first Malaysian bank to partner with the platform.

Maybank has also expanded its support for women-led SMEs with the ‘HERpower’ initiative. Following similar women entrepreneurship programmes led by other banks such as OCBC, HSBC and UOB, ‘HERpower’ provides mentorship, networking opportunities, and financial support to address systemic barriers faced by women entrepreneurs. However, Maybank has differentiated its initiative with stronger financing. The bank has committed up to MYR 1 million ($224,000) in financing per customer, as compared to other programmes, such as OCBC’s female entrepreneurship programme with a financing cap of SGD 100,000 ($74,000). With this initiative, Maybank aims to increase its women entrepreneur-led SME portfolio from 20% to 25% by 2026.

Through the ‘Sama-Sama Lokal’ platform on the MAE app, the bank connects over 39,000 food and beverage merchants to 12 million customers, creating a seamless marketplace that boosts visibility and simplifies transactions. This digital innovation not only empowers SMEs to expand their reach but also aligns with Maybank’s broader vision of blending technology with financial services.

Driving growth through digital customers and small businesses

Maybank’s strategy is producing results. Digital customers, according to the bank, have 106% more current and savings account, 61% more loans, and 86% higher total financial assets than non-digital customers. However, this growth appears to be cannibalised from existing Maybank customers. Maybank holds a consumer loan market share of 19.1% in June 2024 (a 2.7% year-on-year increase) and a retail deposit share of 17.7% (a 1.7% year-on-year increase), suggesting the bank’s continuous improvement in its competitive position.

As a result of the bank’s stronger engagement with SMEs, Maybank has also seen growth in this segment. In Malaysia, Maybank issued MYR 3.9 billion ($874 million) in SME digital financing as of December 2023, with 211,326 SME accounts activated. SME loan origination grew 20% year-on-year, rising from MYR 14.2 billion ($3.2 billion) to RM17 billion ($3.8 billion) in December 2023. In Singapore, the bank achieved a 242% increase in monthly SME loan approvals, from SGD 13 million ($9.6 million) to SGD 45 million ($33.4 million), with average loan size increasing from SGD 2.6 million ($1.9 million) to SGD 3.1 million ($2.3 million). In Indonesia, Maybank’s SME loan portfolio grew by 11%, reaching IDR 20.1 trillion ($1.3 billion). These results underscore the bank’s ability to meet diverse SME financing needs while expanding its footprint across the region.

Reimagining banking with customers at the core of digitisation

Maybank’s transformation goes beyond digitising services and rethinking customer interactions. The M25+ strategy has been instrumental in advancing Maybank’s digital capabilities and personalisation initiatives through the enhanced MAE app and strategic partnerships.

Recent milestones include the 2024 launch of the bank’s goal-based investment feature on the MAE app, making digital investments more accessible to first-time investors. In 2023, Maybank expanded its offerings with an instant cross-border transfer service, providing competitive exchange rates for customers, and further strengthened the MAE app with a regional view feature that consolidates customers Maybank holdings across countries for a user-friendly experience.

Maybank’s approach to SMEs in providing financial support, inclusive programmes and strategic partnerships contribute to delivering a more personalised financial and banking experience for customers. By addressing the diverse challenges SMEs face, from accessing capital to meeting sustainability requirements, Maybank ensures that these enterprises are well-equipped to navigate a rapidly changing business environment. However, Maybank will need to continuously build on its ‘myImpact’ SME ecosystem beyond leveraging on the capabilities of their strategic partnerships. With intense competition in the SME space and banks looking to leverage their share, Maybank’s efforts must continuously evolve to maintain its competitive edge.

With a priority to drive digital innovations and in personalising the entire banking experience for customers, Maybank seeks to leverage its agile M25+ strategy to drive sustained growth and reinforce its leadership in Southeast Asia’s banking sector.