In a year when society and the country continued to feel the impact of the global pandemic, BIMB continued to raise the bar on our community empowerment initiatives, both through our social finance initiatives and by maintaining our focus on financing community-based projects. During the year, we raised a total of RM3.31 million through Sadaqa House, our principal social f inance vehicle, and disbursed a total of RM2.0 million in 2021, to more than 4.700 beneficiaries among the more vulnerable sections of society. Sadaqa House has continued to innovate in the way that it works to empower communities, and in the way that it allows donors to extend their support, by strengthening digital channels, continuing to forge strategic partnerships and developing new structures. Additionally, we expanded our iTEKAD and BangKIT affordable micro-f inance programmes to assist small and microentrepreneurs through one of the most difficult periods they have faced by providing them with start-up capital or financing for business expansion. The schemes continue to provide a pathway for unbanked and underbanked microentrepreneurs to move into the formal banking sector, thus building longer-term prosperity. Staying true to our values as an Islamic bank, we also continued to provide repayment assistance for our customers in need, under the Financial Management and Resilience Programme (URUS) during the year. However, the demand for assistance under the scheme declined sharply during the year as the economy gradually recovered. In addition to our direct social f inance initiatives, we continued to support national development and community empowerment through increased financing for affordable home projects in strategic locations that are targeted at the B40 and M40 segments by providing bridging financing for the developments. In 2021, we approved RM138.9 million in financing for five affordable housing projects, which far exceeded our target for the year of two projects with total financing of RM50 million. Likewise, we also surpassed our financing target for infrastructure and public facility projects by approving a total of RM111.9 million for eight projects in 2021, which, once again, exceeded our target of RM50 million for the year. STRATEGIC PERFORMANCE REVIEW STRATEGIC PILLARS 4: COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT BANK I SLAM MALAYS IA BERHAD 68
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDgzMzc=