INCREASING FOCUS ON BUILDING A SHARI’A DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM
In our eight years of journey as a General Shari’a bank, serving underprivileged and adequately prosperous society, we would like to thank God for all the support we got, so we can get through all the challenges we faced so far, especially during the pandemic. We hope to grow in a sustainable manner.
During our time assisting the inclusive society, the Bank has a great aspiration to create a Shari’a digital ecosystem for the unbanked ones, hoping that this will open broader financial access to sustainably serve the inclusive society. The Bank implements many efforts to support that aspiration, one of which is providing knowledge access through measurable and sustainable empowerment. Inclusive society empowerment has been well-known to be an added value that the Bank is able to provide so far.
As time goes by, the Bank set an even more innovative empowerment program through the “Tepat Daya” Platform where this digital empowerment helps the empowerment program easier to access, and opens the opportunity for everyone to be involved in the inclusive society empowerment and surely adjust the need with their characters.
The bank has also done various transformations to broaden financial access, especially for the inclusive clients that have grown and improved. At this moment, they are given the option to do regular meetings digitally, assisted by Mitra Tepat as an extension from the Bank, to provide banking services. These Mitra Tepat are supported by the Warung Tepat application, which clients can utilize to submit and withdraw cash, open an account, do various transactions like buying phone credit, and paying bills, including e-commerce services for daily needs.
The Bank has also officially improved e-channel services not only for the underprivileged and adequately prosperous society, but also for all financing clients through Tepat Mobile Banking and Internet Banking to optimize the ease of transaction, also having the opportunity to be involved in empowering the inclusive society.
Coming from the need for access to the market for the inclusive society, the bank sees the need to collaborate to expand the market access and reach supply access. One of these efforts is creating BTPN Syariah Venture Capital (VC). Through this subsidiary, the bank can easily collaborate with strategic partners with the same vision to expand the digital ecosystem for the inclusive society in the future. As the implementation, the initial funding was given to Dagangan, an e-commerce platform providing all household needs in tier 3-4 towns in villages. With the existence of Dagangan, digital literate BTPN Syariah clients (known as Mitra Tepat) can get early access to supply needs and sell their products on Warung Tepat application that is affiliated with Dagangan. This is part of the Bank’s efforts to stay relevant to client needs according to the bank’s aspiration to create a Shari’a digital ecosystem for the unbanked ones.
“Thanks to the support from everybody, the bank’s aspiration to create a Shari’a digital ecosystem a few years ago started to show real effects to the clients and the Bank. Not only does it help the Bank to serve them, but these innovations have also given added value for our improved clients, and to the society around our clients (beyond business). This is the ecosystem that we mentioned. Empowered together thanks to technology for the better,” said Hadi Wibowo – CEO of BTPN Syariah.
The Bank’s implementation had shown a stable positive growth in the bank’s financial performance. Up to 30 June 2022, the Bank has achieved the milestone Total Asset above Rp20 trillion, Rp20.2 trillion to be exact, and Funding above Rp 11 trillion, that is Rp11.1 trillion or has increased 16% and 11% compared to the same period in the previous year, which are 17.4 trillion and 10.0 trillion. This funding growth is accompanied by the healthy quality of funding from the Non-Performing Financing (NPF) under the regulator’s provision.
The Bank also stated to have a strong Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) on 48 %, far above the provision and the average of the Shari’a bank industry. Also, the third-party funds (DPK) are maintained at an efficient level of Rp11.9 trillion. This sustainable financial performance generates a net profit after tax (NPAT) of Rp856 billion or more than the NPAT of the previous year, 2020. “We keep on hoping for support from everyone, with no exception to create goodwill together, so we can give the opportunity to grow and have a more meaningful life for millions of Indonesians,” said Hadi.
ABOUT BTPN SYARIAH
Established as a result of the conversion of PT Bank Sahabat Purba Danarta and the spin-off of BTPN’s Shari’a Business Unit, BTPN Syariah was registered as the 12th Sharia Commercial Bank in Indonesia on 14 July 2014. As the only bank in Indonesia that focuses on serving productive underprivileged families with a potential target market of more than 40 million people, known as the ‘unbankable’ for their lack of financial track records and legal documentation, BTPN Syariah sees this niche as both a challenge and an opportunity. For this reason, the bank specifically designs its facilities and infrastructures to be different from conventional banking to ensure effective and efficient products and services for this specific segment.
Despite having only 15 branch offices and 49 Operational Functional Offices throughout Indonesia, the bank works with nearly 12,000 employees to provide frontline services in almost 70% of sub-districts in Indonesia. They are given the responsibility to implement an empowerment program involving productive underprivileged families in customer centers by coaching the families, in order to promote 4 key behaviours of empowerment, namely Courage to Do Business, Discipline, Hard Work, and Solidarity. They are called ‘Melati Putih Bangsa’, our trained high-school graduates working as Community Officers for the bank. As a bank, BTPN Syariah also acquires funds from customers.
Today, as many as 20,000 high-income customers bank with BTPN Syariah and are served by professional personal bankers. Close to 100% of the acquired funds are channeled to productive low-income families, with 4.10 million active customers (a total of more than 6,0 million financing customers). Social impacts on customers, such as their probability of going back to poverty, percentage of children enrolled in school, and ability to repay and to save, are also measured annually. This shows how BTPN Syariah financing programs generate positive impacts on the livelihood of low-income households. The Poverty Probability Index (PPI) by Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) is chosen as the survey method and tool because of its international applicability and stellar credibility, as well as easy implementation.
Our philosophy of ‘Do Good, Do Well’ (where solid performance is followed by real social impacts) is what unites all members of BTPN Syariah under one identity as #bankirpemberdaya.
