STRATEGIC REVIEW As part of our increasingly ref ined digital strategy, we also developed specialised and carefully targeted apps for different areas of our business. We continued to drive digital innovation in Islamic finance with BIMB Investment’s award-winning BEST Invest App that utilises robo-intelligence to assist investors in goals-based investing and has now garnered more than 15,000 transacted users. We also took a step to strengthen our position in another key market area with the launch of the Halal Digital Ecosystem for SMEs, or SMEXpert mobile app, to support their growth by enabling wider networking and knowledge enhancement. We further extended our mobile banking offerings for SMEs and micro businesses by launching the GO Biz by Bank Islam mobile app in July. The app allows small merchants to manage their day-to-day business quickly and securely through their mobile devices and we successfully onboarded more than 7,000 active users. We see vast potential for expanding the GO Biz by Bank Islam user base and during the year we initiated a project to tie-up with small traders at the famous Pasar Besar Siti Khadijah market in Kota Bharu, which has seen some 400 of the market's 1,300 traders migrating from cash to digital payments via the DuitNow QR offered through GO Biz by Bank Islam. We aim to migrate the remaining traders in the market in successive phases and the project will serve as a blueprint for our focused expansion into the micro-business market. The banking sector continues to face potential disruption f rom other increasingly digital intermediaries such as FinTech’s. BIMB has embraced the challenge and the opportunity that this provides. In 2021, BIMB initiated collaboration with selected FinTech’s in order to leverage on their agility and innovation while utilising our credibility as a leading Islamic bank, our customer base and our financial resources to scale-up the results. During the year, we also laid the groundwork to disrupt the Malaysian Islamic banking market with the planned launch of our new digital banking proposition for 2022. The digital inf rastructure for the new digital banking proposition is developed and tested by our dedicated Centre of Digital Experience Division, demonstrating the capacity that we have built to undertake large and complex digital projects with accelerated timelines. The launch of the new digital banking proposition will mark a major push by BIMB into establishing our leading position in Malaysia’s digital Islamic Financial Industry. Achieving our digital ambitions will also require us to integrate technology more thoroughly into all our operations in order to drive efficiencies and remain competitive. During the year, we took measures to strengthen our digital core by digitalising our HR and recruitment processes and upgrading key infrastructure, such as our cheque clearing system and our Digital Vendor Financing Platform (VFP) that services our customers under Petronas and Sarawak Energy Bhd. Critically, we also accelerated the digital upskilling of our workforce with the launch of our in-house Digital Academy and by expanding our digital training and certification programme. These initiatives form the first steps of our digital strategy under LEAP25. As we move forward, digitalisation is set to emerge as a key engine of our future growth and for delivering on our goal of becoming a customer-centric organisation. INTEGRATED ANNUAL REPORT 202 1 Key Messages Overview Value Creation MD&A Sustainability Leadership Accountability Financial Additional Information 71
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDgzMzc=