RHB’s digital account opening initiative, led by Calvin Wong, head of digital business, marks a deliberate shift away from legacy, fragmented onboarding processes to a seamless, integrated experience that aligns with how Malaysian consumers now prefer to engage with financial products. Prior to 2022, customers interested in products such as credit cards or personal financing could do little more than submit their name and contact details on a simple form and wait, sometimes days, for a sales call. There was no centralised lead management system (LMS), no application tracking and little transparency for customers or sales staff. Digital account opening — from fragmented leads to frictionless onboarding In March 2024, following a 2022 pilot, RHB launched a fully digitised onboarding journey for credit cards and personal financing that is embedded into its corporate website and integrated with its enterprise LMS. This platform allows customers to self-complete applications by uploading supporting documents while interest is still high, requesting assisted form-filling by sales personnel over the phone, saving and resuming applications, and tracking application status online. To address drop-offs, the bank built an engagement framework that sends automated email reminders and, if necessary, routes the lead to sales staff for a follow-up call. The results, according to the bank, is highly encouraging. Full application submissions surged by 288% and product approvals by 191% compared to the pre-digital process. Digital sales for credit cards exceeded targets by 68% and personal financing by 52%. Surveys embedded in the onboarding journey revealed high customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores — 4.5 out of five for application flow, 4.7 out of five for language clarity, and 4.6 out of five for form design. The initiative has also proven to be a lower-cost acquisition channel: Wong noted that digital sales now contribute 15% to 20% of monthly sales for these products, with acquisition costs about half, or even a quarter, of branch or mobile sales team channels. The process is optimised for mobile browsers, reflecting the industry trend towards mobile-first engagement. Internal data shows 50% of applications come from new-to-bank customers, and 80% of those are completed without sales intervention. While credit card onboarding can be completed fully remotely with telephone verification, personal financing applications still require an in-branch visit to open a linked current account, a step that will be removed once electronic know-your-customer (e-KYC) integration and straight-through processing (STP) are fully implemented. Planned 2025 enhancements include expanding the platform to more products, reducing form fields, offering pre-approval decisions within the hour, and automating back-end processing. Michelle Liew Yang Har Head of customer experience, RHB Generative AI for consistent and faster branch service In parallel, RHB is transforming how its branch network delivers customer service through RHB Ask, an internal generative artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot described by Michelle Liew Yang Har, head of customer experience, as a “single source of truth” for frontline staff. Launched in 2024, the system resides in Microsoft Teams and is trained on RHB’s frameworks, guidelines, policies and operation manuals. It replaces time-consuming searches through document repositories or calls to internal helpdesks with an “Ask” model that delivers answers in seconds. The target users are RHB’s frontliners, namely its 4,000-branch staff and 200 digital champions across Malaysia, who serve more than 500,000 customers monthly. Questions can range from required documents for a product application, to fees for an international remittance, to how to perform functions on the RHB Mobile Banking app. The AI’s closed architecture, grounded entirely in internal knowledge bases, prevents the security and accuracy risks associated with open-domain models. Accuracy is measured at 90% against source documents, with 89% of responses delivered in under eight seconds and uptime at 100%. The operational benefits are quantifiable. The bank estimates 40,000 man-hours can be saved annually as queries are resolved without escalation to help desks. Usage metrics show more than 1,500 unique monthly users generating 7,000 to 10,000 queries, with close to 50% of eligible staff using the system regularly. In the months following implementation, RHB’s group net promoter score (NPS) rose by four points to +24, while branch NPS increased by three points to +23. RHB has embedded an active feedback loop into the system: staff can rate responses and flag inaccuracies, which are then sent to the owners of the source documents for updates. The bank’s data scientists, AI governance teams, and technology units monitor and refine performance continuously. Weekly “train-the-trainer” sessions ensure consistent prompting skills across branches, with service managers leading half-hour exercises before branch opening to practice queries and share techniques. Looking ahead, RHB plans to expand RHB Ask group-wide, add new content sources, and explore customer-facing generative AI applications to further enhance customer experience. Christine Wong Sze Pin Head of homeowners, consumer finance in group community banking, RHB Flexible and green-focused home financing On the lending side, Christine Wong Sze Pin, head of homeowners, consumer finance in group community banking, highlighted the RHB My1 Full Flexi Home Loan as a cornerstone of the bank’s residential lending strategy. Introduced in 2014, the product combines competitive fee structures — no monthly or set-up charges — with flexibility in repayment, including unlimited prepayments and redraw facilities via internet or mobile banking. One of the bank’s key differentiators is its pioneering green financing component – the first of its kind in Malaysia. Through partnerships with preferred developers, RHB offers higher financing margins for green-certified residential projects, aligning with environmental, social and governance (ESG) priorities and Malaysia’s broader sustainability agenda. This approach appeals to environmentally conscious homebuyers and developers committed to responsible building practices. One of the bank’s key differentiators is its pioneering green financing component – the first of its kind in Malaysia. Through partnerships with preferred developers, RHB offers higher financing margins for green-certified residential projects, aligning with environmental, social and governance (ESG) priorities and Malaysia’s broader sustainability agenda. This approach appeals to environmentally conscious homebuyers and developers committed to responsible building practices. The bank noted that the product, alongside new customer propositions, has strengthened its brand and product presence, lifting market share from 10.14% in September 2022 to 10.45% in September 2024, with uninterrupted month-on-month growth since May 2022. Planned 2025 enhancements include financing solutions to support home equity improvement, lifestyle upgrades, and safety enhancements, which could create cross-selling opportunities for insurance, renovation financing, and energy-efficiency products. New products and enhancements are essential amid intensifying competition from peers offering similar flexi-loan features, while interest rate volatility may impact affordability and refinancing demand. The bank is also looking into publishing more insights on take-up rates for the green financing component and borrower demographics, which would further sharpen targeting and strengthen its ESG narrative. A coordinated transformation with measurable impact RHB’s concurrent initiatives in digital onboarding, AI-enabled branch services, and differentiated mortgage products reflect a coordinated strategy to expand retail market share and improve operational efficiency. The bank has shown ambition in quantifying outcomes — from triple-digit growth in digital applications to significant reductions in service handling time — while outlining clear next steps for scaling and strengthening these platforms. The challenge ahead lies in sustaining momentum as competitors advance, customer expectations evolve, and regulatory frameworks for digital KYC, AI in banking, and green financing tighten. By broadening its product scope, refining AI capabilities, and deepening ESG-linked offerings, RHB is well-positioned to consolidate its role in Malaysia’s retail banking market while setting benchmarks in service delivery and product innovation.
