KUALA LUMPUR (July 25): Alliance Bank Malaysia Bhd has earmarked RM50 million as capital expenditure to enhance its digital value propositions for customers in the financial year ending March 31, 2020 (FY20).

Speaking to reporters at a press conference after its annual general meeting here today, chief executive officer Joel Kornreich explained that the bank has been launching more digital products and services to support more businesses, especially the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) amid the challenging economic outlook.

"We are putting in a lot of effort in accelerating to give all of that to SMEs. We are actually very sanguine about our ability to make a difference in the market and to compete very, very effectively," said Kornreich.

"This year, we believe that we will continue to stay ahead of the market thanks to all these innovations," he added.

In FY19, the bank has stepped up on its digitisation efforts to provide faster, simpler, and more responsive service to its clients, it said in a statement today.

It launched the Alliance Origination System, a workflow process that streamlines and automates credit process, reducing 60% of the normal processing time.

This quick turnaround time contributed to the 39% growth in SME loan disbursements, the bank added.

Kornreich said the bank has also rolled out digitisation of individual CASA (current account, savings account) openings, enabling customers to complete their account opening in as little as 15 minutes, from 45 minutes previously.

He added that the bank will progressively roll out its digitised same-day CASA opening this year.

Additionally, to further enhance customers' banking experience, the bank has launched its mobile banking app allianceonline Mobile, which saw 52,000 signups within a year.

At 3.30pm, shares of Alliance Bank were down two sen or 0.54% at RM3.68, valuing the bank at RM5.7 billion.