As a Southeast Asian country, Indonesia has prepared itself to face competition in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), slated to be enforced by the end of this year.

The AEC allows the free-flow of goods, investments and human capital among Southeast Asian countries in all industrial sectors, which means each sector in every country must boost its competitive advantage in order to survive.

The banking sector is no exception. Maybank Group, headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with Indonesia and Singapore as its other home countries and branches dispersed in 19 countries and present in all 10 ASEAN countries is definitely a big player in the Southeast Asian region.

The bank has devised several strategies in order to excel in the upcoming implementation of AEC, particularly in Indonesia, where it operates.

CONVENIENT SERVICE    

According to Maybank Indonesia president director Taswin Zakaria, as an ASEAN regional bank, Maybank has seamlessly integrated its policies across different countries to make it easier to facilitate international trade flows, particularly in the Southeast Asia region. Maybank can facilitate business potential from ASEAN countries to Indonesia and vice versa.

'€œWe have a uniform transactional banking system to facilitate cash transactions for individual, institutional or retail clients,'€ he explained, adding that by offering a convenient and integrated way to complete international transactions, the bank helped to maximize business opportunities from ASEAN'€™s trading activities.

Aside from the convenience offered by the seamless banking integration, Maybank also offers digitized banking services, namely Maybank2U (M2U), a complete one-stop financial portal offering smartphone services such as banking, insurance and stock broking. Maybank also provides banking service which combines its web-enabled payment gateway and financial supply chain for its clients in an ecosystem via Maybank CoOL Banking. Corporate Online Banking (CoOL Banking), where corporations are able to constantly supervise their business activities as well as its ecosystem on real time base.

Taswin said that businesses always involved a complex business ecosystem that needed constant monitoring, mentioning a plantation business as an example.

'€œIn a plantation, you have an ecosystem which comprises of a company, the farmers, maintenance matters that might be outsourced to a third party, fertilizer contractor, logistics and many more. If the company suddenly needs certain tons of fertilizer, we can provide bill discount facility to the contractor and will foot the bill on the company, making the transaction process easier,'€ he explained.

Such a monitoring system is important considering that businesses often need swift actions amid transactions that often need to be conducted simultaneously.
According to Taswin, the CoOL banking system is tailored to the ecosystem of different businesses which serve as the main sectors of a particular region.

'€œPlantation activities, for example, are particularly strong in North Sumatra. Mining is very strong in Kalimantan, while handicraft industry is strong in Central Java. So the system is tailored to fit the supply chain essential to each business sector,'€ he explained.

He added that the system also aimed at boosting and empowering local economies.
 
'€œWe always develop our products based on the experience of our clients and the solution that they need, that'€™s the most important thing. We don'€™t just push our products but instead trying to find out what are our clients'€™ needs,'€ he added.

CONSTANT LEARNING FOR HUMAN RESOURCES

According to Taswin, the banking sector is a service industry, thereby requiring qualified and solid human resources as they are indispensable for excellent service.

'€œWe strengthen our personnel through intensive educational programs starting from management trainee to those at the management board. We provide on the job training and higher education. Furthermore, we also send our employees for overseas assignments,'€ he said.

Overseas assignment is a strong tradition in Maybank, which sets a quota that a certain percentage of its employees must get international working experience to enhance their knowledge.

'€œSeveral people here have had experience of working in our headquarters. We can also send people to New York and London, where we also have branch offices,'€ he explained.

According to Taswin, the Bank has sent 54 Maybank Indonesia staff members for overseas assignment for certain periods.

'€œMost companies put their employees in the back office during overseas assignment. We are different. We require our employees to also involve themselves in client interaction, taking care of customers in a different country. We can'€™t be a regional bank if our employees don'€™t have an international perspective,'€ he said.

He concluded that by learning directly from international best practices, employees were able to shorten their learning curve as the experience enabled them to learn without having too many trial-and-error processes.