Malaysia’s RHB Bank is a big believer in the power of education to elevate people out of poverty and underprivilege.
The bank runs a series of education initiatives. Some are designed simply to help children from low-income families by providing extra tuition classes, meal allowances and reference materials. This is the RHB X-Cel Programme, and those who do well within it can seek scholarships allowing them to go to local public universities – with the possibility of a job at RHB at the end of it.
Others focus more precisely on financial literacy. The RHB Money Ma$ter Programme, and similar initiatives elsewhere in the region from Singapore to Cambodia, seek to give people the power to help themselves through a greater understanding of their own finances.
Elsewhere, the bank aims to lift communities by getting its employees to participate in humanitarian initiatives, and by providing dedicated programmes for crisis relief.
All of these things were tested by Covid-19. Having helped children with tuition through the RHB X-Cel Programme, the bank stepped in again when those same children were deprived of classroom access but did not have the hardware to participate in online learning. On a philanthropic level, the bank provided cash to Covid-affected families, ICU ventilators to government hospitals and meals to frontline workers, then stepped in again when floods hit the country in 2021.
“As a financial institution, we place great importance on education and financial literacy as we know they’re vital for a sustainable future,” says Norazzah Sulaiman, group chief sustainability and communications officer.
