CIMB Bank measures, monitors and improves business performance with SAS® Financial Management

CIMB Group is Malaysia’s second largest financial services provider and one of Southeast Asia’s leading universal banking groups. The banking group operates on a dual banking system via three main brand entities - CIMB Bank, CIMB Investment Bank and CIMB Islamic Bank - giving customers a choice of both conventional and Islamic banking solutions.

With more than 1,100 branches across Southeast Asia, the banking group offers customers a full range of financial products and services that also include treasury, insurance and asset-management services.

CIMB Group aspires to advance by focusing on its core themes of regionalisation, optimisation and innovation. In its rapid expansion, CIMB faced a significant challenge in the effort, time and cost associated with managing ever-growing business performance demands.

Ng Ing Peng, Head of Finance, CIMB Group says, “We needed to have a system that was able to address our increasing needs for improved business performance. “SAS delivered us that solution. We were comfortable with their implementation approach and customer-driven values. SAS helped ensure timeliness, accuracy and integrity in our reporting, and enabled us to access relevant, reliable and consistent information throughout the bank.”

Relying on SAS at CIMB Bank
As the group’s fastest growing segment, CIMB Bank had to address increasing demands for more complex and comprehensive management reporting, as well as the challenge of managing increased data volume. In order to keep up, the bank successfully adopted and implemented SAS Financial Management solutions.

Stephen Ng, Senior Manager of CIMB Group’s Strategy and Finance Management Reporting Unit, shares that, due to expansion, the need for transparency and conformity to regulatory requirements is now even more imperative. With SAS Financial Management in place, the bank is supported in its objective to maintain a consistent and reliable information repository, thereby enabling improved financial reporting. In turn, focused and relevant management reporting improved the business decision-making process and enabled the bank to consistently achieve sustainable performance improvements.

Trust and confidence in SAS Professional Services
Following the successful implementation of SAS at CIMB Bank, it was again seamlessly implemented at CIMB Investment Bank and CIMB Islamic Bank. 

Ganesan Rajandran, Project Manager at CIMB Group’s Strategy and Finance Management Reporting Unit, said that the adoption of SAS at CIMB Bank, CIMB Investment Bank and CIMB Islamic Bank has been efficient and effortless throughout. The ease and timeliness of the implementations have been an encouraging experience for the team.

He says that the value derived from CIMB Group’s deployment of SAS solutions is attributed to the joint-implementation approach between SAS Professional Services and the bank’s internal project teams, along with SAS’ methodology of encouraging skills and knowledge transfer to the CIMB finance and reporting team.

He further explains, “The manner in which the SAS project was delivered is commendable, as it emphasised knowledge transfer and usability to the CIMB team. The bank was able to leverage the knowledge gained during the first phase of the implementation, which then enabled the CIMB project team to independently lead and deploy the SAS solution during its second phase with minimum consultancy from SAS Professional Services. CIMB and SAS Professional Services displayed good teamwork in terms of project implementation. The commitment of the SAS team in supporting CIMB’s project team in the efficient and effective adoption of SAS is laudable. SAS’ ability to automate management reports from multiple data sources and leverage the existing skill sets of the bank’s employees in using Excel allows CIMB to use SAS independently and with minimal support.”

Ganesan Rajandran concludes, “The swiftness and agility of SAS Professional Services consultants in delivering the solution have helped us in successfully adopting SAS Financial Management. Our collaboration with SAS has provided us with a solution to manage change in a complex environment.”

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

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