CIMB’s six-year Forward30 roadmap sets the course for digitalisation, wealth expansion, and advisory-led growth. Haniz Nazlan, CEO of Group Consumer Banking, discusses how CIMB is reimagining customer journeys to match evolving financial goals and life stages across ASEAN.

As of March 2025, the group’s current account and savings account (CASA) ratio had risen to 43.8%, up from 40.8% the year before, while return on equity (ROE) held steady at 11.4%. These gains reflect successful engagement strategies, which are now scaling across age, income, and ambition.

Rebuilding trust through security and presence

Nazlan frames trust as both a cybersecurity imperative and a commercial advantage. While CIMB’s legacy offers a foundation of confidence, he said the bank is doubling down on secure digital experiences and consistent delivery to maintain customer peace of mind in a fraud-prone world.

“We take our establishment and the strength we’ve built over the years as a signal of trust from customers,” he said. “But we don’t take it for granted.”

Trust, he added, is also built through presence — being a financial partner across life’s milestones, from a child’s first savings account to retirement planning and legacy transfer. With 18 million consumer banking clients across Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Cambodia, the group is shifting away from generic segmentation to more nuanced, persona-driven engagement that reflects life stage and behaviour.

This evolution in engagement supports Forward30’s ambition to reshape CIMB’s income profile. A portion of its non-interest income (NOII) is expected to come from client franchise activities — including wealth advisory, payments, and cross-border services — reflecting a strategic pivot toward relationship-led, multi-product engagement.

Lifecycle engagement and advisory triggers

“We are moving away from the traditional model of product pushing,” said Nazlan. Instead, CIMB is building integrated customer journeys across age, income and ambition — from junior savings accounts to intergenerational wealth solutions.

Through CIMB@Work, payroll-linked accounts serve as entry points for broader financial engagement. The bank’s partnerships with Sun Life in Malaysia and Indonesia, Prudential in Thailand and Principal Asset Management support scalable insurance and investment offerings. In Malaysia, CIMB’s collaboration with As-Salihin Trustee Berhad offers Islamic legacy planning through CIMB Islamic's Comprehensive Wasiat. In Singapore, where CIMB uses an agnostic bancassurance model, the bank partners with seven insurers to ensure customers are matched with the best-fit protection solutions.

“Every corporate banking client or SME owner is also a retail customer,” Nazlan stressed. CIMB sees SME and corporate clients as dual-channel opportunities, reinforcing its push for bundled propositions like CIMB@Work to deepen retail wallet share.

Tailoring wealth advisory for ASEAN’s emerging affluent

As ASEAN’s middle class expands — with up to 65% of the population expected to enter the middle- or upper-income bracket by 2030 — CIMB is repositioning its wealth strategy around digital accessibility and personalised, goal-based advice. “We want to sit with the customer, be with them as their wealth partner and curate products that match their needs,,” Nazlan added, stressing that this approach enables CIMB to curate portfolios aligned to each client’s goals.

An internal survey reinforced this direction, identifying three priorities: better access to global investments, seamless omnichannel engagement, and timely market insights. In response, CIMB is scaling up its My Wealth platform — already live on CIMB Clicks and soon on the OCTO mobile app — to provide real-time views of customer assets, liabilities, and investment performance. These tools, along with a forthcoming Chief Investment Office (CIO) portal, aim to deliver consistent, scalable advice, particularly for the emerging affluent.

To enable more tailored engagement, relationship managers are supported by AI-powered tools and CIO insights — equipping them to deliver contextual advice based on individual financial profiles. Affluent clients, in particular, benefit from regional account access, consistent cross-border recognition, and seamless advisory experiences.

Structured products and other market-linked solutions — offered through CIMB’s Preferred and Private Wealth suite — are also central to this proposition. Backed by Treasury & Markets expertise, these instruments deliver diversified strategies tailored to client goals — with capabilities from the Wholesale Banking division now increasingly embedded in CIMB’s wealth delivery. In financial year (FY) 2024, Treasury & Markets income rose 17.8%, reinforcing the division’s role in driving advisory-led NOII under Forward30.

Reinventing the branch, not replacing

While accelerating digitalisation, CIMB maintains a significant physical footprint with over 600 branches and close to 6,000 self-service machines across its ASEAN network. “Our goal is to create hybrid value — digital convenience with human empathy,” said Nazlan.

Branches in Malaysia and Indonesia are being transformed into advisory centres, with AI tools at welcome desks and, in Indonesia, after-hours video banking kiosks. No single branch format will fit all, Nazlan observed. “In industrial zones, branches may need to cater more to SMEs and commercial clients, on top of the retail clients we serve. We’re designing bespoke archetypes by geography.”

While scaling digital innovation from markets like the Philippines and Vietnam, in Singapore, CIMB is also using WhatsApp-based advisory powered by AI to support pre-sales engagement. At the same time, the bank’s majority stake in TNG Group — the operator of Malaysia’s leading e-wallet, Touch ‘n Go (TNG) — forms a strategic extension of its consumer ecosystem. With over 21 million registered users, TNG serves segments that may fall outside the formal banking system.

Beyond payments, TNG facilitates micro-insurance, transit-linked services and merchant partnerships, positioning it as both an inclusion enabler and a feeder into CIMB’s broader banking and wealth propositions. As Forward30 evolves, platforms like TNG are instrumental in expanding the group’s addressable market while embedding CIMB into customers’ everyday digital routines.

Data and AI for contextual advisory

Central to CIMB’s transformation is a next-gen AI strategy that combines predictive analytics with human insight. On the OCTO app, a feature called Just for You tailors promotions, products and services based on customer behaviour, financial patterns and expressed preferences.

“What one customer sees on their [OCTO] screen in terms of the key campaigns, products, services and all that is very different from another customer,” Nazlan explained, adding that the bank is also using analytics to improve customer experiences by reducing friction in customer interactions.

In Indonesia, CIMB Niaga’s OCTO app goes a step further, integrating a financial “health check” tool that helps customers budget and manage expenses. This reflects the bank’s broader ambition to evolve OCTO into a one-stop mobile platform — combining everyday banking with long-term financial planning and wealth management.

Meanwhile, Voice AI rolled out under Indonesia’s CIMB Niaga collections operations is also delivering clear results. “For pre-due loan collections, we deployed AI voicebots that sound like humans,” Nazlan noted. “We’ve reduced the number of live agent cases by 50% and improved collection capacity by 70%.”

The bank is also embedding AI insights into relationship manager workflows to improve contextual engagement across lending, investments and other services. “AI shouldn’t replace human touch. It should complement it.”

ASEAN first but locally rooted

Nazlan characterises CIMB’s strategy as balancing cross-border scale with local familiarity.

“True ASEAN citizens — those who live and travel across the region — need consistent service, recognition and access,” he highlighted. “At the same time, in places like Indonesia, we are seen as a local bank. That dual identity is our strength.”

Through offerings like cross-border account opening, regional payroll integration and multi-market recognition for affluent clients, CIMB is building what Nazlan calls a “360-degree view” of the customer — one that evolves with geography, life stage and ambition.

Looking ahead, Nazlan defines success across three dimensions:

1. Customer embeddedness: Building relevance across key financial moments.
2. ASEAN leadership: Enhancing cross-border connectivity and market coverage.
3. Purpose-driven growth: Delivering financial inclusion, sustainability and responsible AI.

CIMB’s focus on embedded finance, advisory innovation, and cross-border scale underpins its strategy to remain competitive in an increasingly digital and diversified ASEAN banking landscape. As Forward30 enters its mid-phase the bank aims to achieve a group ROE target of 12–13% by 2027. “I’d like to see Consumer Banking remain the key contributor to group revenue,” Nazlan said.

At the same time, CIMB’s ability to translate advisory ambitions into measurable gains in wallet share will be pivotal — not just for growth, but for positioning the bank as a regional leader in customer lifetime value, integrated financial journeys, and seamless cross-border connectivity.