KUALA LUMPUR: Affin Group will enlarge its focus in the consumer banking segment as it sees immense business opportunities there, despite it being a competitive environment.
"Our business used to be 55 per cent corporate banking, but now we want to move the focus to retail banking and work on our asset composition so that the retail banking asset would grow,” said group chief executive officer of Affin Holdings Kamarul Ariffin Mohd Jamil at the end of the group's extraordinary general meeting (EGM), here today.
Kamarul added the bank's current size and reorganization exercise, which also saw the transfer of the listing status from Affin Holdings to Affin Bank Bhd, will also help this endeavour.
"We are keen on consumer banking because we see there are a lot of opportunities to grow and the risk factors, when it comes to non-performing loans (NPL) is also lower as opposed to corporate banking,” he said.
Because of its small size, Affin will also have more freedom to tailor its offerings to retail clients, which is something that the bigger banks are not able to do so, he said.
For the first half of 2017, the bank saw its loans books growing by 2.5 per cent. The bank is anticipating the full year growth to be in the region of six per cent.
"The growth will be mainly from our consumer banking and small and medium enterprises (SME) segments,” said Kamarul.
Another segment the bank will be focusing further on is Islamic banking, which according to Kamarul, has grown substantially over the last two years.
“Our Islamic loans books used to be 19 per cent but it has grown to 34 per cent, within the last two years,” he said.
Today's EGM saw the group gaining shareholders approval for the transfer listing status from Affin Holdings to Affin Bank Bhd.
As such, Affin Holdings also successfully transferred its entire shareholding in Affin Hwang Investment Bank Bhd, Affin Moneybrokers Sdn Bhd, AXA Affin Life Insurance Bhd and AXA Affin General Insurance Bhd to Affin Bank.
“This reorganization will simplify the shareholding structure of the group as well as reduce the layers or corporate structure. It will also allow us to move forward in achieving our next growth phase,” said Kamarul.
“Our capital position will also be further strengthened while the returns will be enhanced by the corporate exercise.”
The corporate exercise is expected to be completed within the first half of 2018.