Maybank takes the award for the world’s best bank for corporate responsibility after delivering on the social commitments at the heart of its M25+ group strategy, chief among them a pledge to improve the lives of two million households across Asean between 2021 and 2025.
Behind that headline sits scale – MYR76.54 billion ($18.8 billion) invested in social financing and empowerment since 2014, reaching more than 5.5 million people – and flagship programmes with results externally validated.
The group channels its corporate responsibility work through Maybank Foundation, its dedicated social impact arm. Board oversight runs through a dedicated sustainability committee and in 2025 the group added a social impact committee of senior leaders from across its business units and countries – a deliberate shift from group-level visibility to holistic tracking of every market.
A hub-and-spoke model cascades targets group wide, with monthly reporting on initiatives, beneficiaries, investment and employee volunteering, while programmes are benchmarked using the Business for Societal Impact framework and reviewed by second parties including the UN Global Compact Network Malaysia & Brunei and the University of Nottingham.
Social impact is a key differentiator for Maybank as we remain deeply committed to deliver meaningful outcomes for our stakeholders, including our customers and communities that we serve across ASEAN and beyond
Datuk Shahril Azuar Jimin
The numbers for 2025 alone illustrate the breadth of the effort. Maybank mobilised MYR29.4 billion in social impact investment during the year, benefitting more than 1.49 million individuals and small businesses across the region. That comprised MYR29.33 billion in social financing – affordable lending, restructuring assistance and inclusive insurance reaching 491,637 customers – alongside MYR73.81 million deployed across 131 social empowerment programmes supporting 997,797 beneficiaries. Zakat-funded investments through Maybank Islamic & Etiqa-zakat, the group’s insurance and takaful arm, added MYR31 million, benefiting 117,284 people from Asnaf communities.
From unbankable to bankable
The clearest expression of the strategy is Reach Independence and Sustainable Entrepreneurship, or RISE, an entrepreneurship and financial inclusion programme for persons with disabilities, their caregivers, low-income households and solo parents. Marking its 10th anniversary in 2025, it has trained 51,183 participants across six Asean countries since 2015, nearly 40,000 of them persons with disabilities or their caretakers.
Participants complete a three-day entrepreneurial and financial literacy course – with Maybank staff briefing them on banking products on the final day – followed by three to six months of coaching. Previously unbanked participants have opened first savings accounts and taken micro, property and hire-purchase loans.
By the end of 2025, average monthly incomes had risen 139.3%, with the top 40% of participants recording average gains of 331%. The University of Nottingham study, which has validated outcomes since inception, found 73% of participants sustained income growth beyond three months and 57% maintained or increased incomes beyond the monitoring period. Alumni have created more than 1,200 jobs.
Delivered with more than 568 government agencies and NGOs across the region, RISE drew public praise from Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim during the country’s 2025 chairmanship of Asean.
A pan-Asean ecosystem
Maybank’s regional footprint shapes the rest of the portfolio. eMpowering Youths Across Asean, run with the Asean Foundation since 2018, has deployed 482 youth volunteers across five cohorts, working with 39 civil society organisations on 10 projects a year, and has reached more than 114,000 beneficiaries. The fifth cohort added volunteers from Timor-Leste alongside the 10 Asean member states, and one cohort-four volunteer returned as a civil society partner in cohort five – the ripple effect in action. A recent project established a solar-powered e-library on the Philippine island of Siargao, giving 595 students, teachers and parents access to digital learning.
Maybank Women Eco-Weavers takes an end-to-end approach to preserving heritage textiles while building sustainable livelihoods, from mulberry cultivation for silk production through to market access via the bank’s own procurement and advocacy. Operating 12 training centres and a sales gallery across Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia and – since a 2025 expansion – the Philippines, it has supported 2,307 weavers and 2,812 farmers since 2016. Its regional natural dye workshops, bringing together 124 weavers from five countries, showed the shift from chemical to locally sourced natural dyes cutting production costs by an estimated 20% to 30%.
The bank has invested in its own capability too. Maybank Sustainable Practitioner Certification, co-designed with the UN Global Compact Network Malaysia & Brunei and the first multi-level, industry-specific certification of its kind in Asean, has enrolled more than 1,000 employees across five markets, with over 500 certified, including members of the group executive committee. Its Cahaya Kasih volunteering scheme mobilised more than 17,000 employees across 90-plus initiatives in 2025.
“Social impact is a key differentiator for Maybank as we remain deeply committed to deliver meaningful outcomes for our stakeholders, including our customers and communities that we serve across ASEAN and beyond. Anchored on our purpose of Humanising Financial Services, Maybank’s social impact is premised on a two-pronged approach via social finance and social empowerment, enabling us to move beyond impact at scale towards lasting and systemic change. We will continue to focus on outcomes that reflect real improvements in livelihoods, resilience, and opportunity, while building the capabilities required internally to design and scale inclusive solutions,” said Datuk Shahril Azuar Jimin, group chief sustainability officer.
Maybank is not standing still. Its next five-year strategy, Roar 30, embeds social impact as a core strategic lever, targeting three million individuals over five years – 500,000 through financial literacy and 2.5 million through financial inclusion and social empowerment – with Maybank Foundation as the group’s centre of excellence for social impact.
