Retail Banking in Malaysia: Winning on Customer Experience When Every Bank Has an App

The short version

Malaysian bank customers are, on the whole, happy. The industry's 2025 customer satisfaction survey, run by Kantar for the Association of Banks in Malaysia and the Islamic banking association, scored 87% satisfaction and a Net Promoter Score of +43 across 19 banks.

But the same survey points to where banks are falling short: digital services that must be reliable every time, processes with too much friction, and personalisation that has not kept up with what customers expect. Meanwhile, Malaysia's new digital banks have signed up close to two million customers in about two years.

When every bank has an app and similar rates, customer experience is what customers notice. Here is what it takes to win on it.

What customers are telling banks

Two numbers in the survey sit side by side. The mobile app is the channel customers use most, and it scores well. But relationship managers score highest of all, especially with affluent customers.

That is the real lesson. Customers do not want digital instead of people. They want the app for everyday banking, and a person who knows them for the moments that matter, like a home, a business loan or a family change. The problem is that, in most banks, the app and the person work from different systems.

Where the journey breaks

Take a home loan, the biggest purchase most customers make with their bank. In many banks it still looks like the top lane below.

Three fixes that matter most

Digital and human, on one record

The best banking experiences connect what the customer sees in the app with what the relationship manager sees on screen. When both work from the same record, the app can handle the everyday, and the person can step in with full context.

What it looks like in practice

RHB Bank redesigned its retail onboarding on Salesforce Financial Services Cloud with Telcowin, with mobile-first applications, simpler forms and save and resume, plus an AI assistant that gives staff instant, compliant answers. Read the RHB story.

ASNB gave its contact centre a single customer view in three months, in time for the annual dividend season, so advisors could see each investor's history before they answered. Read the ASNB story.

Principal Asset Management replaced overnight batch runs across 20 systems with real-time connections, so service teams had the full picture on every call. Read the PAM story.

How it comes together on Salesforce

Financial Services Cloud gives relationship managers, branches and contact centres one view of each customer, their products, applications and life events.

Data 360 and MuleSoft connect core banking, cards, wealth and the mobile app, so the record is current without rebuilding the core.

Agentforce can prepare client briefs, answer routine questions and chase missing documents, with approvals and limits set by the bank, and personal data protected by the Einstein Trust Layer.

Marketing Cloud turns life events into timely, consented messages in the app, by email or on WhatsApp.

All of it has to meet Bank Negara Malaysia's technology risk and outsourcing requirements and the Personal Data Protection Act, so governance, data residency and audit trails should be designed in from the start.

Where to start this quarter