Its ROE hit a low of 2.1% in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, compared with Malayan Banking’s 8.1%, Public Bank’s 10.7% and RHB Bank’s 7.7%.
When Abdul Rahman Ahmad came on board as CIMB Group Holdings group CEO in June 2020, it was a point in time when the country’s second largest banking group by assets had been lagging behind the industry on a number of key financial metrics, particularly return on equity (ROE). The pressure was on for him to remedy the situation.
CIMB’s cost-to-income ratio (CIR) was one of the highest in the industry, its Common Equity Tier-1 (CET-1) ratio — a key measure of a bank’s capital strength and resilience — was not on par with peers and there were periodic incidents of elevated credit cost. Notably, ROE, a measure of profitability, had been declining.
