KUALA LUMPUR: Maybank Islamic Bhd expects its financing growth to achieve eight per cent this year, backed by improved customer sentiment and momentum in the country’s economy.
This is also at par with industry consensus of estimated financing growth, which stood at eight per cent for the financial year 2017.
Maybank Islamic chief executive officer Datuk Mohamed Rafique Merican said the bank saw a strong demand coming from various industries, including the consumer and corporate segments.
“We see good demand from consumer services for Islamic financial services, corporate side, we see quite strong momentum to enable Islamic financing to grow at much higher level.
“We still need to see broad-based growth in all industries because some industries are facing a bit more challenges. I think when it comes to growth it might not be as widespread as in the past,” he said on the sidelines of the Islamic Banking and Finance Media Workshop 2.0 yesterday.
The workshop was co-organised by the National Press Club and Maybank Islamic.
Mohamed Rafique also said that the strong Malaysia’s gross domestic product growth recorded in the first two quarters of this year reflected the growth momentum for financing.
“We see supports from both consumers and corporate side… infrastructure, small and medium enterprises financing and mortgages in some segments,” he added.
Last year, Maybank Islamic chalked up a financing growth of 14 per cent, surpassing the overall industry growth of 11 per cent.
Maybank Islamic’s total deposit and unrestricted investment account stood at RM139.1 billion, followed by Bank Rakyat (RM82.6 billion) and CIMB (RM55 billion).
BIMB, often referred as the benchmark for the domestic Islamic banking industry, anticipates that the Islamic banking industry to record moderate loan growth of between five and six per cent amid the challenging operating environment. — Bernama