Maybank bags 'Responsible Business' award

by **Cals** Wed 23 Oct 2013, 00:47

Business & Markets 2013

Written by Bernama

Tuesday, 22 October 2013 18:55

KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 22): Malaysia's largest bank by asset value, Malayan Banking Bhd, was announced the joint winner of the "Responsible
Business" award with BNP Paribas, at the inaugural Efma-Accenture Innovation Awards 2013, held recently in Paris.

The aim of this award is to identify and honour banks for groundbreaking customer innovations, and it attracted participation from more than 150 banks from 54 countries around the world.

The joint award is for Maybank Foundation's national financial literacy programme called 'CashVille Kidz' — an animated television programme that focuses on educating young children on financial literacy.

"Through the Maybank Foundation, this initiative (CashVille Kidz) is an extension of Maybank's commitment to ensure that our surrounding communities derive maximum value from us," said Head of Maybank Corporate Affairs and Maybank Foundation Secretariat Eliza Mohamed.

She said the bank was grateful with the victory and hoped to continue contributing to the economic and social growth of the community in the years to come.

Aired since February on Astro's TVIQ, CashVille Kidz's has been broadcast to over 1.5 million Astro subscribers and two million Youtube viewers.

The programme objective is to make learning about financial management fun and interactive for children, and it was endorsed by the Ministry of Education and made part of the national co-curriculum syllabus.

CashVille Kidz has also engaged with more than 180 schools and 50,000 students, throughout Malaysia.

Season 2 of the programme will be aired in February next year, and is targetted to reach out to even more students nationwide, so that they will benefit from the programme and help them get a head start in taking charge of their financial situation.

Meanwhile, Efma Secretary-General Patrick Desmarès said, many of the most impressive innovations came out of emerging markets, in Eastern Europe and Asia, competing with some of the biggest established banks.

"We hope that these innovations inspire others to examine what they are currently doing, and identify opportunities to make further advancements in customer-facing products," he said.

He said to drive profitability, banks need to transform their business models and innovate, to engage with their customers based on what they need and not on what banks have to sell.

The global distribution and marketing innovation awards was jointly held by Efma — an association whose membership includes nearly one-third of the world's largest retail banks, and Accenture — a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company.