KUALA LUMPUR: AmBank Group believes that it is equal opportunity for all now that Pakatan Harapan has been voted in.
Group chief executive officer Datuk Sulaiman Mohd Tahir said AmBank will continue “fighting” for business opportunities.
“As you know, AmBank has never been a government-linked company (GLC) and it is in our genes to fight and compete for our business,” Sulaiman said at a press conference after the group’s annual general meeting today.
“With the new government, we believe that it is equal opportunity for all and we will continue to fight for business.”
AmBank expects no policy changes to existing fiscal policies on the back of newly-appointed Bank Negara Malaysia governor Datuk Nor Shamsiah Mohd Yunus.
“Just like (Tan Sri) Muhammad Ibrahim, Nor Shamsiah is also an old hand at Bank Negara. As such, we believe that we will see a continuation of the fiscal policies and directions to interest rates and the likes would still be consistent. We don't foresee any surprises so we are quite comforted by that,” he said.
Sulaiman also shared that AmBank had not been approached by the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) task force.
“As usual, we remain an open book and have been working with regulators in regards to this matter over the last two years,” he said.
Bank Negara had in 2015 fined the group RM53.7 million for “non-compliance with certain regulations” and “weaknesses in its reporting system” when a report showed that up to RM2.6 billion had been transferred into the personal bank account of former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak.
AmBank had never specified the exact reason for the fine, but it is believed to be linked to the 1MDB case.
Sulaiman said it was too soon to expect the impact on the coming Sales and Services Tax (SST) on its credit card business.
Under the new SST model to come into play on September 1, a total of RM25 will be implemented on each credit or charge card upon renewal.
“We believe there might be some impact on the credit card segment but credit cards are such a necessity these days that we believe that consumers would still opt for it even with the SST,” said Sulaiman.
The bank had also allocated between RM120 million to RM160 million for the yearly running of the bank, according to group chief financial officer Jamie Ling.
“We allocate half of that towards our digitalisation approach as digitalisation is part of our Top 4 Strategy, which envisions the bank to become one of the top four bank in Malaysia by 2020,” he said.