Mutual Trust Bank (MTB) Limited is expediting business transformation with a high focus on digital banking, in a bid to further empower its customers.
The key commercial bank that came into operation in 1999 has been expanding its network over the last three years through partnering with the FinTech companies, with a broader objective of becoming a leading digital bank in the country.
"We want to serve the needs of our valued customers in phygital (physical and digital) ways," said Syed Mahbubur Rahman, managing director and chief executive officer of MTB in an exclusive interview ahead of the bank's 23rd founding anniversary to be celebrated on October 24, 2022 (today).
The pandemic has given a lesson to do business in a different way. Taking the lesson positively, the bank is putting increased emphasis on digital banking to ensure that customers do not need to come to their outlets and stand in queues for banking purposes.
The bank created a dedicated digital banking division with more investments to make it a more sustainable and secured service-providing entity, Mr Rahman said.
He said MTB had a very good banking app through which valued customers would get all kinds of services from anywhere and anytime.
"In fact, we want to empower our clients further. That's why, we want to make significant improvements in the digital area as we want to be seen as a leading digital bank in the country," Mr Rahman said.
Talking about the journey of the commercial bank, which was also listed with both the bourses of the country - Dhaka and Chattogram - in 2003, he said a group of iconic business people had launched the bank, paying serious attention to corporate governance and global best practices.
"In this long journey, yes, there have been some ups and downs, but we could establish ourselves as a very strong bank in the market," said Mr Rahman.
When his attention was drawn to the banking activities at a time when there is a looming threat of global recession, he said banks every year set a growth target by chalking out an aggressive plan of actions to reach it.
"We've to be very careful in the coming days. We should concentrate more on consolidation, more on bringing efficiency from the existing balance sheet rather than having an aggressive growth projection because you might be hit by more NPLs and more problems.
"I think, time has come to be more realistic and to reassess your thoughts by continuously reviewing the portfolio risk so that we can understand which portfolio might get impacted so we can go for immediate remedy accordingly," Mr Rahman said.
Regarding the business expansion of the bank, the MTB chief executive officer said he was looking to expand the bank's networks digitally, partnering with a lot of FinTech firms.
"We created a very strong digital platform in order to bring convenience to the customers who can do everything like loan submission, deposit products and account opening at their own time. In the process, we're empowering our customers more," he said, while informing that MTB has now been working to develop a corporate app.
About the bank's current areas of focus as far as the investment is concerned, Mr Rahman said the MTB is a corporate bank where around 80 per cent investment is made on a wholesale basis.
"We have a plan to gradually reduce the dependency on corporate (investment) to 50 to 60 per cent in next 3-5 years and increase the ratio to 25 per cent in SMEs and 15 per cent in retails. This is how we want to diversify our services," he said.
The MTB is providing services through 119 branches and 36 sub-branches across the country. The number of active deposit accounts increased from 743,178 in December 2021 to 770,610 in September this year.
The number of customers enjoying SMS banking services increased from 664,457 in December 2021 to 760,817 in September 2022. The number of Internet banking users increased from 64,112 in December, 2021 to 92,798 in September 2022.
Even though the banking industry faced challenges due to Covid-19, MTB maintained its profitability in the last three years. In 2021, the bank achieved a remarkable growth in operating profit (61 per cent) and in the third quarter of 2022, the growth is 43.69 per cent compared to the same period last year.
The bank also received a number of recognitions from various quarters, including as "One of the top ten sustainable banks of Bangladesh" by Bangladesh Bank (BB) based on its 2020 performance, and letter of appreciation by the BB in 2021 for its outstanding role in distributing 100 per cent of Covid-19 CMSME stimulus package.
