Banking system in Indonesia: Indonesia has three tiered banking system

Mr. E. Stefan Meurling, President Director of PT Surya Nordfinans talks about the financial and banking structure in Indonesia.

Talking about our financial activities, the main challenge is the banking system, which is not working at all. There is a three tiered banking system, which is foreign banks. Foreign banks are effectively here to soak up Indonesian money. They are not doing very much for Indonesia. There are state-owned banks who have the capacity, but are still to some extent staffed with public servants. You also have smaller, private banks who are corporate linked and they don’t have the muscle. This compares to Sweden 40 years ago on the financial side, but that also means that financial activity is really hard work here.

The financial sector is not particularly competitive. Primarily the foreign banks are active in the retail sector, writing credit cards like mad. But they are not providing any funding into the community. There are the Hong Kong Banks or the Citibanks of this world, and they are financing their customers from abroad. If you walk into their door and say, “I want to become a customer”, that is really hard work. It is a very inefficient market. Retail is very simple, because just throw it out and if you have so many customers, there is always a buyer. To do business banking, it is a more difficult task.