The Business Year

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With a population that is the fourth largest in the world and a low penetration rate, Indonesia is one of the world's biggest potential banking markets.

Batara Sianturi

CEO, Citibank Indonesia

Citibank received the Best Foreign Bank award by Finance Asia in 2017, and we have also been recognized as the Best Global Bank. We are focused on digital and were accordingly acknowledged as the best bank in consumer digital and the best bank for corporate digital, both by Global Finance. We have also received awards in other specific areas such as mutual funds, corporate social responsibility, corporate bonds, and syndicated loans. In November 2017, four Citi bankers were inducted into the top 100 bankers in Indonesia by Infobank Magazine. These are important because earlier in 2017 Citi globally targeted to be the best bank in the eyes of our clients. We do not seek to be the biggest bank, though we want to be the best bank. A few years ago, we also globally outlined our philosophy: Citi wants to be simpler, stronger, smaller, and safer. We learned our lessons in the quest to be the biggest and forgot that we are in fact a bank when we got involved in businesses that we did not understand. We used to have an insurance business and a brokerage business, and we used to own assets that we did not understand. When it comes to our matrix we focus on returns and efficiency. We want to deliver the best returns on asset, equity, and efficiency, which is a cost-to-income ratio below 50%.

Chalit Tayjasanant

Executive Vice President & General Manager, Bangkok Bank

The proximity of Indonesia and Thailand is a key advantage, and one of our key drivers to look to Indonesia for business opportunities. We started with trade financing, because trade in the 1960s was focused on commodities when Thailand sold some of our agriculture products to Indonesia. Since then, business has transformed. Thailand is fairly strong in the agricultural base, and we play a role outside of lending to bring investors into Indonesia to take advantage of the resources that the country has to offer, such as ample land and human resources. 2017 was better than 2015 and 2016 because commodity prices stabilized and are currently in a period of slowly catching up further. In general, 2017 was a relatively successful year compared to previous few years, and I expect 2018 to be better than 2017. Overall, we plan to grow by double digits and higher than 2017. There will be provincial elections in Indonesia in 2018 and general election in 2019, and these will play a part as well. 2018 and 2019 should be large spending years for everyone, which will get businesses rolling. We look to continue our work in petrochemical and food and beverage, as well as consumer-facing sectors. We will also emphasize on logistics, for example those related to infrastructure. The energy sector will also be in play in both 2018 and 2019.

Ali Yong

President Director, Ali Yong

Ijoined Bank Sampoerna in early 2014, when the bank was still in its early stages. The purpose of acquiring the bank was to ensure that we could help and nurture the growth of our colleagues in the micro and SME sector. There are around 60 million SME and micro players, and only around 30-40% are served by a formal financial institution. We compete with the informal sector, namely individual moneylenders, and are performing better than them. As a small player, we still have a great deal of room to grow, and our performance in the last three years has been positive, though banks have been leaving the micro sector in the last few years due to downturn in the commodity-driven sectors of the economy. We are growing quite well in terms of net earning assets, with growth at around 40-50% per annum in the last three years, though we only have 20 branches so far. Opening up branches can be costly, and, therefore, we leverage our strategic partners that already have a presence in more remote areas. We focus on monitoring the performance and underwriting criteria, as our main business is simply savings and loans. 2018 should be better because the impact from investment in infrastructure has started to kick in, and some of the projects are now functioning well.

Moch. Hadi Santoso

President Director, BRISyariah

In 2017, average financial growth was 7% while third-party funds grew at around 16%. Our profit was around 5% on average. In 2017, the consumer lending sector and commercial lending grew the most. In commercial lending, we saw growth in the construction sector, while in consumer lending it was mainly in housing. We will conduct an IPO in 2018; we want BRISyariah to be an open public company with greater transparency and professionalism. In terms of financing, we also want to raise new capital for three areas: IT, expanding our business through financing growth, and new brands. Our composition is commercial and retail, with commercial representing 30% and retail 70%. Our decision is to therefore focus on retail. Additionally, there are four classifications in Indonesia for financial institutions; we are currently tier two, and our capital is around IDR1-5 trillion (USD70-350 million). We want to increase our capital via an IPO to become one of the top five players in Islamic banking. We are currently the third largest amongst 13 Islamic banks in terms of assets. We target increasing our profits and revenues by between 15 and 30% and expect 2018 to be significantly better than 2017. We will focus on infrastructure such as toll roads and new energy solutions, while in retail, the focus is on customers through housing and pensions.

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