STRATEGIC REVIEW HOW WE RESPONDED OUTLOOK LINK TO • We targeted our business towards areas of the economy that offered strong growth prospects during the year. Our Consumer Banking business continued to focus on demand from the household sector. Our Corporate and Commercial business expanded in areas including finance for affordable housing and Green Financing. • We worked closely with our customers and clients to ensure that they had the necessary support, including by offering financing deferrals and the restructuring of facilities. • We continued to provide social finance and forms of direct support to vulnerable segments of society that remained affected by the challenging economic conditions. BNM projects that the Malaysian economy will grow by 5.5% in 2022, driven by a recovery in domestic demand and stronger growth in the external sector. The recovery will be supported by the shift to the endemic phase of COVID-19, the pump-priming impact of Budget 2022, a stronger labour market, the gradual reopening of international borders and strong global growth, all of which will be supportive of a stronger performance by BIMB. The growth prospects for the economy come with downside risk, though. Disruption to global supply chains, rising inflation and energy prices, and growing geopolitical tensions add a high degree of uncertainty and BIMB will maintain a prudent stance as we move forward. • BIMB continued to diversify our noninterest income as a hedge against interest rate movements. • We tapped into the growing demand for financing from consumers and businesses eager to take advantage of lower interest rates, resulting in our f inancing book growing by 6.4% in 2021 , which is considerably above the industry average. We expect BNM to maintain the current record low interest rate of 1.75% throughout the first half of 2022. We see a higher possibility of a rate hike in the second-half of the year, in order to curb inflationary pressure, but the timing or actual occurrence of any rate hike will be subject to prevailing economic conditions. Capital Stakeholders Material Matters Capital Stakeholders Material Matters The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic remained pervasive across all areas of our operating environment in 2021, but society and businesses have effectively adapted to the new reality. At BIMB, the robust measures that we instituted in response to COVID-19 in 2020 proved adequate to allowing us to manage the continued impact of the pandemic in 2021. As always, the new year offered both new challenges and new opportunities. This section sets-out how we managed the former and worked to capitalise on the latter in 2022. INTEGRATED ANNUAL REPORT 202 1 Key Messages Overview Value Creation MD&A Sustainability Leadership Accountability Financial Additional Information 47
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