RHB Bank has received accolades for its seamless and efficient small and medium enterprise digital financing platform.
Malaysia’s RHB Bank has been awarded the Excellence in SME Banking trophy at the 14th Annual Retail Banker International Asia Trailblazer Awards.
The award recognises the lender’s commitment to provide the latest digital financing solutions.
RHB Bank’s small and medium enterprise (SME) digital financing platform allows customers to interact with the bank remotely, apply for financing through the website and mobile apps and simplifies the underwriting process by employing a rule-based process engine.
Convenient solutions
The digital financing platform also offers remote interviews and site visits with geotagging capabilities, making it more convenient for applicants to interact with the bank in a secure environment.
By incorporating technologies such as AI and machine learning, RHB Bank has streamlined processes and improved decision-making capabilities, resulting in faster loan application turnaround times and higher acceptance rates.
The lender extended about RM34.4bn in various forms of payment assistance to retail and SME customers during the Covid-19 pandemic, serving more than 240,000 individuals and 4,700 SMEs.
Small business lending
Since its launch in 2018, RHB Bank’s SME online financing segment has experienced tremendous growth in its small-ticket business lending portfolio, reaching RM840m in 2021, up from RM65m in 2018. This upward trajectory has continued, with the portfolio growing to RM1.2bn in 2022.
The average turnaround time to approve a loan was also reduced to an average of three days in December 2022, from an average of 21 days the year before.
Mobile app features
In addition to these initiatives, the lender’s RHB Financing (SME) mobile app has character recognition capabilities that allow it to extract and analyse bank statements, reducing the manual work involved in the credit hub. This has increased the average monthly turnaround time from submission to approval by 80 per cent, improving the productivity of the bank’s operations. RHB Bank has also introduced two additional digital capabilities: Smart Interview and MyKad Verification.
Risk management
The Smart Interview capability allows the lender to perform virtual site inspections and interviews, with geolocation capabilities that enable it to pinpoint the customer’s location for better risk management.
Meanwhile, the MyKad Verification capability enables RHB Bank to digitally verify a business owner’s identity by combining facial recognition capabilities with a landmark verification ID check that authenticates the Malaysian Identity Card.
RHB Bank’s commitment to offering SMEs a seamless and efficient digital experience as well as supporting them with financing solutions that leverage technology to enhance processes and im-prove the customer experience has positioned it as a leader in the SME banking space.