KUALA LUMPUR (June 11): RHB Bank Bhd is aiming to increase its financing for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from 16% of the bank's domestic financing to 20% by 2022.

RHB Banking Group head of group business and transaction banking Jeffrey Ng Eow Oo said this will be boosted by its launch of the RHB SME Financing portal, which enables customers to apply for SME term loans online within 10 minutes with minimal data inputs, and obtain financing within five working days.

"SME is a key area of growth for our banking group, and in line with that, we want to ensure that we continue to innovate our products and services to remain at the forefront of the industry," he told reporters at the launch of the new product today.

Through the online platform, RHB targets to approve RM100 million in SME loans over the course of one year. Today, RHB launched its pilot run focusing on SMEs in the Klang Valley and will subsequently introduce the platform nationwide by the third quarter of this year.

The RHB SME Financing offers SME term loans with a minimum tenure of six months up to 24 months, for disbursements of between RM50,000 and RM300,000, eligible for businesses with an annual turnover of less than RM35 million.

The online loan application only requires two documents to be uploaded, and it provides a loan simulator to assist customers to calculate their affordability. In addition, tracking of the application can also be done through the status dashboard on the platform.

"One thing that SMEs are looking for is simplicity. They find that banks are a bit complicated; they are unsure of how to do the submission and they don't have clarity as to where exactly are their applications. So with this platform, we are trying to address that exact gap, where we want to give customers simplicity. We reduce the documentary requirements and we will also tell them exactly at which point is their application process," Ng added.

Ng noted that Malaysia has approximately 900,000 SMEs in the country, whereby close to 20% of which have some forms of relationship with RHB, giving the bank an SME loan market share of 9% as of 2017.

"We have been consistently innovating our products over the last two to three years following our digital roadmap. So we believe the innovations will keep us ahead of the competition. The SME market itself has a lot of depth and is still underpenetrated so there is still room to grow for the banking industry. More importantly, we would also like to deepen the wallet share and relationship with our existing SME clients," he said.

SME Corp Malaysia chief executive officer Datuk Dr Hafsah Hashim, who was also in attendance at the launch, told theedgemarkets.com that products like the RHB SME Financing online platform have been a long time coming to address issues faced by the SME business community.

"I think the SME business community is definitely looking forward to this because the issue at hand is really about fast delivery of the products. In this case, I think the five-day disbursement duration that have been promised by RHB Bank will certainly be welcomed by the business community," she said.

"I do hope that this programme will be successful because once you get a faster approval process and that documentation comes after approval, it will really help the business community to plan their cash flow better," Hafsah added.