Indonesia

Over a 20-year career, the still youthful Kartika Wirjoatmodjo has built a reputation as Indonesia’s financial Mr Fixit. Now, the popular banker has a new challenge – to build Bank Mandiri into a domestic leader with aspirations across southeast Asia. Is it his biggest challenge yet?

Investors ate up China’s dim sum bonds and snacked on India’s masala notes. Could a taste of Indonesia’s nasi goreng bonds be the next thing to satiate emerging market investors’ appetite?

Mandiri Sekuritas

Just as Singapore’s biggest bank starts to ramp up its acquisitorial push into private banking across Asia, its operation in Jakarta is tapping into an unexpected bonanza in Indonesia.

In a vast Indonesian market obsessed with ‘HahPeh,’ Bahasa shorthand for handphones, digital has become the new financial frontier for bankers.

As one of Indonesia’s leading civil servants, Mandiri chief executive Kartika Wirjoatmodjo takes his bank’s social commitments seriously. From disaster relief to raising healthcare standards and bringing remote communities and indigenous tribes into the economy, Mandiri’s CSR charter is focused on working alongside state campaigns to develop business and financial literacy across the 17,000-island archipelago.

A rare glittering star in Indonesia’s fading state-owned corporate firmament, Mandiri is well-placed to service the country’s emergent small and medium-sized enterprises, with authorities channeling subsidies and advantages to the grassroots via Mandiri’s nationwide network.

DBS has been in Indonesia since 1989, in a country where being from Singapore has not always been popular with the business and political classes. So it has been a slow burn for DBS in building up a full-service operation across the islands.