When Khairil Anuar Mohammad Anuar joined CBP as CEO three months ago, he knew exactly what he wanted to achieve in his new role. “There is nothing to prove, actually, because I’m not competing with anyone. I want to accelerate the bank’s growth to the next level.”
Khairil Anuar said that the Board and he had an aligned view. The agenda did not really change when he joined CBP last year – to grow the cooperative bank in any possible way. As the new CEO with a holistic background in financial services, he believes that they are able to accelerate it a bit. “There is a lot of potential to grow. I am certain that we can achieve our target this year,” he tells WargaBiz.
“The past few years have been great years for CBP. We are a very healthy bank. All our key ratios as the capital ratio, liquidity ratio, profitability ratio, etc, are all healthy. Over the last five years, we have been paying good dividends to our shareholders.”
Over 2 decades of experience in different financial services
Prior to joining CBP, Khairil Anuar has a holistic background covering many aspects of financial services, namely, Islamic banking, takaful, development banking and now cooperative banking. “I only left with investment banking not to cover yet,” he laughs.
Spending over two decades taking different roles in different financial services, he was used to adapting to different fields – starting out at Bank Negara Malaysia as a manager in Governor’s Office, Head of Corporate Strategy at Al Rajhi Bank, Head of Risk Management & Compliance at Hong Leong MSIG Takaful and his last tenure at SME Bank Malaysia as COO.
That career diversity gave him the all-rounder knowledge he needed to be able to successfully run CBP. “I had a balanced knowledge of all the banking aspects. It is a good learning curve for me. That gave me the confidence to carry the responsibility as the new CEO at this place.”
A clear vision for CBP
Khairil Anuar commented that CBP is the second-largest cooperative bank in terms of assets. It is a recognised cooperative bank for its comprehensive products and services, extraordinary talents, and strong customer relationships. “I believe these elements, especially good talents serve as a solid foundation for the company to build upon,” he says.
When asked about his vision and strategy for CBP, he said the next challenge is to get everybody on board and live in his vision. “In any organisation, there are three sets of groups; those who are with you, those 50:50, and those who are not with you. My job is to bring everybody together, “One dream, One goal.”
Undeniably, he noted that the whole people behind CBP have been doing well all this while. However, he is affirmative that what they need to do next is to perform even better. He strongly believes that they can do it. “I don’t think our engine is overheated. We can run it even faster,” he points out.
To achieve the goal, Khairil Anuar has devised a strategy covering all aspects.
“First, I have successfully developed corporate KPI for the bank. For our KPI, we don’t solely focus on the financial. But, I have broken it down into four pillars – Financial Performance, Internal Process, People and Customer, and ESG.”
“Meaning, it will be the bank KPI and my own KPI as a leader. The Board is going to measure me on all those four aspects. If I did very poorly in one of the aspects, I am be going to be penalised.”
He shared that the new KPI is one of the big things that he has introduced. It’s a very comprehensive KPI that measures every aspect to ensure they are progressing and on a right track aligned with the vision.
Focusing on people, creating talents
Another element he introduced is taking employee engagement to the next level. “I want all my staff to bond. I believe that people are the most important element in any organisation. I asked HR to design a programme where we can have the company’s annual retreat so people can bond, create a healthy working environment.”
Khairil keeps emphasising talent and people. As the new CEO of CBP, he believes that people drive business success. “I want to take care of the people, inspire them and unleash their talent. My priority is to take care of my people because I consider them to be one of my major assets,” he shares.
“My end game is to create top talents for the market”
When asked if he is confident with his strategy, he firmly said he is very confident. “I have faith in my people. I can see my staff also reacted positively. I received quite a lot of good feedback. I want this company to be healthy, to be solid. I want to reward my people as in giving good bonuses, increments, and also pay good dividends to our members.”
Pandemic response
There is no question that the impact of the COVID-19 has been substantial on all industries. Khairil Anuar has encountered this challenge firsthand. “We are ready to navigate through the pandemic. Like other banks, we are also part of the system and our customers are also affected at large. Since the pandemic started, we have introduced several programmes for our customers such as moratorium, CSR, etc,” he points out.
“We have launched a few programmes as well, such as CB-Prihatin for SMEs, CB-Prihatin for Professionals, Prihatin COVID-19 for frontline workers and many more,” he explains.
Challenge accepted
Now, looking ahead, Khairil Anuar is excited by the possibilities as CBP continues to grow. “I have some ideas to grow CBP. Our primary focus is still retail. We will continue to be a retail bank because that has been serving us well. In future, we will introduce more products. Besides, we are also looking at other services and will continue to develop the talent, thus, growing the bank. Going digital is our priority too.”
“Our target for 2022 is to grow more than RM1 billion financing. There are a lot of plans awaiting us and I cannot wait to achieve them together with my people,” Khairil reveals.
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