KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s largest financial services group, Maybank, has been named as one of the World’s Best Banks 2020 by the Global Finance Magazine.
The bank has joined the list together with its counterparts in the region, namely Australia’s Commonwealth Bank, China’s ICBC, Indonesia’s Bank Mandiri, Singapore’s DBS and South Korea’s Hana Bank.
A report on the magazine’s portal said despite the current challenging external environment, Asia-Pacific banks posted a steady performance, supported by ample capital buffers, a low cost of credit, funding largely by deposits rather than capital markets, and a willingness to meet digitisation challenges through innovation.
This bodes well for the post-Covid-19 era, the report cited some observers as saying.
The report quoted Graeme Knowd, managing director at Moody’s Financial Institutions Group in Hong Kong, as saying that banks in Asia Pacific are well-positioned to weather the crisis.
“We believe that after the crisis, most highly-rated banks in Asia will return to profitability and continue to merit high ratings,” he said in the report.
Maybank has presence throughout Asean, China, the United States and the United Kingdom.
The bank offers conventional and Islamic banking services, including commercial and investment banking, insurance, wealth management, mortgages, auto financing and credit cards.
Maybank Group’s brokerage arm, Maybank Kim Eng, meanwhile, engages in equity and bond underwriting, mergers and acquisitions, project finance and syndicated lending.
For the sixth successive year, Maybank was rated A by MSCI ESG Research.
In 2018 and 2019, it was the only Malaysian organisation to be included in the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index.
Its share price rose by one sen to close at RM7.40 today. – May 14, 2020, Bernama
