The publicly listed bank, the majority shareholders of which are private lender Panin Bank and the Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB), wants its financing and third party funds to climb by about 15 percent each this year. Currently, DIB holds 39.32 percent of the shares in the Islamic lender.

“We will continue making efforts to widen our network to attract customers and provide them with various products and services. Such a strategy aims to get more funding, especially CASA [current accounts, savings accounts],” Panin Dubai Syariah president director Deny Hendrawati said during a press briefing in Jakarta on Tuesday.

The lender channeled Rp 6.71 trillion (US$503.9 million) in financing as of December last year, which was 14.6 percent higher than in the same period a year earlier, according to its financial report.

Its third party funds grew by more than 16 percent year-on-year (yoy) to Rp 6.89 trillion, while its assets expanded aggressively by 22.7 percent yoy to Rp 8.76 trillion during the same period.

The firm, Deny said, would also develop its retail banking to help growth. Panin Dubai Syariah aimed to increase the retail sector’s contributions to financing to 60 percent within the next three years from about 40 percent last year.

“The retail segment offers higher margins than that the commercial one, but it requires a lot of networks, infrastructure and technology. It will take a long time to change,” director Doddy Permadi Syarief said.

On that basis, the lender is preparing network technology that can support its purposes. “We are preparing that with support from Panin and DIB as we need to learn more from them about the technology,” Deny said, adding that the development would also lead to cooperation with financial technology firms.

She, however, refused to elaborate on the details of the technology.

The country’s sharia banking industry is facing the so-called 5 percent trap since its assets to GDP has stagnated at about 5 percent of the whole banking industry for many years, despite the fact that the majority of Indonesia’s 250 million people are Muslim.

The government and the financial authority have initiated several measures to boost the industry’s growth. The latest move was the establishment of the National Committee of Sharia Finance (KNKS), led directly by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, in December last year.

The committee aims at unlocking the potential of local Islamic finance so that the country can be a global hub for it.

Bankers are actually among those to blame for the stalled growth of the industry because they have not capitalized on the potential of the industry, DIB group chief executive officer Adnan Chilwan said.

“The mistake that we have been doing for many years [is saying] you’re a Muslim so you need Islamic banks. This is wrong because when you start founding a faith-based bank, you won’t make many efforts to develop products, technology and systems,” he said, adding that customers would keep looking for banks that match their needs.

A survey conducted by the Financial Services Authority (OJK) in 2008 showed that the use of verses from the Quran by sharia lenders to market their products was not effective. It also revealed that most of those surveyed said they would choose whichever bank gave them the most benefits.

Panin Dubai Syariah wants to change the situation and convince Indonesians that Islamic banking is for everyone. “Why should you come to us? Because we have branches, systems and the technology,” Adnan said.

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