Citibank to shed low profile in Brunei

New managing director wants to change bank's `footprint' in Sultanate.
CITIBANK NA Brunei will no longer remain low profile as strategic plans following the appointment of its new managing director and country officer, points to a more sustainable plan in entering the Brunei banking sector.

"Yes it has been low profile for the last eight to 10 years, and I would like to change that," Terence Cuddyre told The Brunei Times yesterday. "I think we can do more here, and I'm not certain what that is yet," said Cuddyre, who accepted his new position last month.

The bank is currently looking at a number of initiatives and are now doing some in depth studies in "a couple of other areas" to see if Citibank NA Brunei can start to change their "footprint" and to do more in the Sultanate.

"One of the discussions that I had before I accepted the position with our senior people was that if they wanted me to go down there, I had to go down with an understanding that they wanted me to do more in the country. I got a lot of support from the regional office so that is part of the package," said Cuddyre, in an exclusive interview.

Some of the strengths that Cuddyre said Citibank possesses include its reputation on the consumer front globally, he said, adding that the global bank has constantly ranked in the top echelon of consumer banks.

"The challenge here is that Brunei is already very well banked, there are very strong players here with good product offerings in the market place, so if we decide to try and expand in the consumer front, it will be a difficult battle," he said.

He added that on the corporate side, there are two focuses one where they could focus on financing for small and medium enterprises but also for large corporates.

"Historically Citi has done better in the large corporates rather than the SME (small and medium enterprises), so we'll probably look to that space initially and look to the SME side probably once we get a bigger 'footprint' of the large corporate side," he said.

"I think there are a couple of things we're trying to evaluate, one of the obvious things is credit cards.

"We're very successful globally on credit cards, and that would be a possibility. Another thing we're spending some time with is in light of His Majesty's push towards more investment products," he added.

Cuddyre explained that they are currently looking to see where there could be "competitive advantage" in investment products due to the fact that it is a very successful area for Citibank globally.

Cuddyre was previously posted in Thailand, and said the last time he came to Brunei was for a conference so he didn't really have a chance to see the country, but once the position was offered to him, he was excited about the opportunity.

"I think a couple of things made me excited. Firstly the country is a relatively wealthy country and on a percentage basis, there is a relatively large middle class here, so that usually give more opportunities than developing countries in the Asia Pacific (do)," he said.

The "entire energy field is going to present opportunities on the corporate side", he said.

Cuddyre said that there will definitely be challenges to the strategic plans that Citibank NA Brunei, one of which being the highly competitive market in the banking sector.

"We're not the only ones that look at Brunei and want to do more here. There are a couple of very good financial institutions and a couple of international competitors that are here as well. Some of the smaller regional banks have already developed fairly competitive product offers, so one of the challenges is that ... it's already a well banked market so competition is going to be steep," he said.

"Having said that, I think we can do very well across the globe so once we're ready to embark upon our strategy, we'll compete effectively," he said.

The Brunei Times