KUALA LUMPUR (March 30): RHB Bank Bhd is eyeing an 11% loan growth for its retail segment this year, an increase over the 8.9% posted in 2017.

Vice-president and acting head of retail banking Nazri Othman said it was an aggressive target which needed to be achieved to meet the bank’s five-year strategic plan (FIT22), with one of its objectives being to increase the retail portfolio.

For this, the bank would focus more on products like mortgage, personal loans, unit trust financing as well as credit cards, he told reporters at the launch of the RHB RinggitPlus Credit Crad XpressApply via ChatBot here today.

He said the retail segment had contributed quite substantially to the bank’s growth in growing at above eight  per cent, compared to over three per cent of the bank’s total growth.

Nazri added that the retail assets size stood at about 46% or RM76 billion of total loans as of December last year.

On another note, RHB Bank is also putting more effort towards growing deposits, especially for the current  and savings accounts.

“The aggressive loan growth requires more funding via consumer deposits, “ he said.

Towards growing the retail portfolio, Nazri said the bank had collaborated with RinggitPlus to offer the digital platform services to customers.

In September last year, it introduced Southeast Asia’s first online personal loan application processing via ChatBot, which received an overwhelming response. To date, the bank has disbursed about RM25 million via this platform from 2,500 approved applications.

ChatBot is a real-time messenger style platform on RinggitPlus.com.

“Although we maintained both ChatBot and the traditional channel,  the bank saw 95% applications were via the digital channel as the response was easier and faster, Nazri said.

Following the overwhelming response on the personal loans space, the bank today introduced credit card applications via ChatBot.