OCBC NISP
Fun fact: the NISP in the name of one of Indonesia’s oldest banks, OCBC NISP, is a rare holdover from the bank’s beginnings at a time when Indonesia was a Dutch colony. The name Nederlandsch Indische Spaar en Deposito Bank, or Dutch (East) Indies Savings and Deposit Bank, might be a window into history, but as booming Indonesia marks its 73rd year of independence this year, it is with another acronym – SME – that this venerable Singapore-owned bank is making a modern impact.
Two years after chief executive Parwati Surjaudaja, the granddaughter of NISP’s founder, targeted big city-centric small and medium-sized enterprises with a digitized ‘sales dashboard’, business has taken off. In the year to May, total SME income has jumped 18.4% as loan balances have climbed 22.6%. Net interest income from SME banking is up about 13%.
OCBC NISP says its sales dashboard initiative, which allows its bankers to act more like relationship managers, contributed to a 34% increase in new loan bookings from existing customers, now making up 32% of total new loan booking growth.
That’s not bad for an old bank that has managed to cement a genuine partnership between its foreign owners of 21 years – Singapore’s OCBC – and the ethnic Chinese, Indonesian family that founded it in 1941.