The Malaysian FinTech Landscape, 2019

The Malaysian Banking Industry is on the Brink of Technological Disruption

This study covers the reaction of traditional banks and other financial service companies, the Malaysian regulators and supporting organisations to the new-generation trend of FinTech and explores FinTech start-ups active in the Malaysian market.

A regulator holds the key to growing markets; this is true of FinTech in Malaysia. We have captured key roles of regulators, such as Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM, the central bank) and Securities Commission Malaysia (SC), in regulating and managing the financial services in the country. In addition, we have analysed the steps taken by the regulator to continue to guide the insurance industry towards a growth path. We also looked into the supporting role played by the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) in enabling the industry.

This research service throws light on the digital ambition of 6 leading banks and their push to incorporate new technology as a whole, and specifically FinTech. We have examined how their vision and mission statements have reshaped to accommodate the changes brought over by FinTech and furthered our understanding on various initiatives taken by companies to increase their level of customer engagement, and thus their understanding of customers. We have also detailed the various accelerator programs being run by leading banks to adopt new technologies from new-age start-ups. We have compared the various FinTech initiatives of leading banks and identified banks that lead others in such initiatives.

This research service reviews the Malaysian FinTech landscape and further investigates key FinTech companies active in the country. For each FinTech company covered, we have included basic information, such as milestones, investment received, overview and solutions offered. As most of these InsurTechs have different and newer ways in which they engage with customers, we inspected their engagement models and product features that differentiate them from banks and insurance companies. We have further captured key people enabling such technology-driven companies and attempted to discover their partnerships and relationships with existing market players.

We also delved into how and where FinTechs have an impact on not only the industry as a whole but also the incumbent banks, equity financing market and financial advisors. We have analysed the degree of impact and/or whether it has been positive or negative.

We have added an executive summary that brings all of this together in a crisp form, to help busy executives get a gist of this research service and then read in detail sections that matter to them.