Malaysia-headquartered Maybank Group launched an Islamic Wealth Management service and has ambitions to grow.
Maybank currently has 500,000 customers for Islamic wealth management (WM) solutions throughout Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. The bank plans to double the number of customers, following the official launch of this service, as soon as possible.
The biggest customers for Islamic WM are now from Malaysia and Indonesia, which have a significant Muslim population. Meanwhile, Singapore has only 1.1 million Muslim population. «But we expect Singapore to have the most number of offshore customers,» Alvin Lee, Maybank’s head of group wealth management and community financial services told finews.asia.
Growing Shariah Advisors
Along with its ambition to grow further, Maybank wants to hire 50 more Shariah advisors within the next two to three months. The bank currently has over 20 Shariah advisors and a total of 1,500 relationship managers.
They will be certified and will be able to advise on all the five Islamic WM pillars, Lee said. The five pillars include wealth creation, accumulation, preservation, purification and distribution.
Beyond ASEAN
Despite having strong footprints in Southeast Asia (ASEAN) countries, Maybank wants to widen its Islamic WM service beyond the region in the next two to three years. The bank now has an office at Dubai International Financial Center (DIFC), to look at potential markets of the Middle East.
Additionally, Maybank is looking at the opportunity in London, UK, where it has a branch but does not focus on Islamic WM. «Once we are successful in Singapore, we'll do the same for Dubai and London… we want to make sure we become very successful in Singapore,» Lee said.
