AustCham Myanmar warmly welcomes its newest member: YOMA Bank

AustCham Myanmar warmly welcomes its newest member: YOMA Bank
About YOMA Bank
Yoma Bank is Myanmar's most progressive bank founded in 1993. Since then, Yoma Bank has built up its technical capacities and worked towards providing modern financial services to its customers. It offers savings products, a wide range of loans and business solutions to individuals, SMEs and local corporate clients to fund their business operations in Myanmar. With over 25 years of being responsible bank, Yoma Bank has been consistently making significant investments in strategic priorities- people, technology and corporate governance. Yoma Bank stands in the top 5 banks in Myanmar by assets with 3000+ employees and 80+ branches across the country.
Myanmar is seen as a country with high growth potential for banking, and Yoma Bank is standing at the forefront when it comes to the areas that have been highlighted as most important: small loans to SME’s and customer focused digital banking. Yoma Bank believes that through reaching small-scale entrepreneurs, it can not only help communities build Myanmar’s economy, but also continue to grow Yoma Bank.
As one of the biggest and most trusted banks in Myanmar; international organisations put their faith in Yoma Bank because of its reputation for integrity and good business practices. In September 2014, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) chose Yoma Bank for their first direct investment in Myanmar; a package that included a convertible loan of US$5 million and advisory help to improve Yoma Bank’s risk management and corporate governance.
In 2016, Yoma Bank, became a founding member of Wave Money, Myanmar’s first mobile financial service and now the largest mobile money platform in the country. Today it serves over 23 million users at 58,000 Wave shops across the country.
Yoma Bank has also established strong partnership with both local and international organisations leveraging strategic advantages in its services. Yoma Bank has benefitted from a significant grant from LIFT, a multi-donor, UNDP administered trust fund, to expand agribusiness finance to Myanmar's underserved agricultural community - a key segment in Myanmar’s development. Yoma Bank also partnered with Rabo Bank, the Dutch multinational banking and financial company, aiming to reinforce the financial sector in the country through a digital roll-out.
Yoma Bank understands that in order to enable sustainable development of the Bank, strengthening the capital growth is crucial, preferably through long term investment from quality investors. Since the new Central Bank regulation that allows foreign investments in local banks was introduced in early 2019, Yoma Bank quickly acted on the new financial reform becoming the first local bank that acquired the international investment in Myanmar. The International Finance Corporation (“IFC”), a member of the World Bank Group, converted part of the loan provided to Yoma Bank in 2014 to equity shareholding on 23rd May 2019. Subsequently in February 2020, GIC of Singapore, and Norfund of Norway have acquired equity stakes in Yoma Bank.
Yoma Bank strives to fulfil its mission to “Build a better Myanmar for its people” financing the needs of Myanmar families and businesses. All the operations led by the Bank are centered around its core values such as Customer, Integrity, Respect, Teamwork and Innovation. Yoma Bank’s efforts were recognized with a total of seven awards at the Myanmar Employer Awards 2017, including the “overall best for local employer”. These awards were across all departments from marketing and training to human resource, and reflect the co-operative atmosphere and team spirit of Yoma Bank.
For more information about Yoma Bank, please visit www.yomabank.com .