CEO of AMAAN and Former CEO of BTPN Syariah
A seasoned banker with over two decades of experience investing in financial inclusion of underprivileged women across Indonesia, Ratih breaks misconceptions and has shown exemplary leadership in her industry.
“My father always taught me: love your country – give whatever you can,” Ratih recalls how her sense of nationalism grew.
Her late father, who had been a student soldier during Indonesia’s independence era, influenced Ratih a lot. She was given the freedom to study and to pursue whatever profession she liked, as long as she took full responsibility for her choices. So, when Ratih first started her career, climbing the corporate ladder was never her motivation. It was her thirst for learning, and for serving her country.
Bank Danamon was where Ratih got her first taste of microbanking. Like others, Ratih went through the training process. Later, an opportunity came to go abroad and learn more about the business. Ratih was also involved in Danamon Simpan Pinjam – a program providing credit to small shops at traditional markets.
The business swelled in size – a surprise for the industry. “It was a time when there was no incentive whatsoever to do microbanking, but it contributed so much to the bank,” Ratih said.
After Ratih joined BTPN in 2009, she had the chance to further expand her knowledge into mini micro banking (ticket size starts from IDR 1 million). Her rigorous learning and studying led her to one proven and sizable business model: investing in women.
Ratih broke common perception that poor women were unbankable and proposed to change the bank institution itself. She created systems, products, and infrastructure specifically tailored to serve underprivileged women in rural areas. Overall, Ratih brought unconventional and unorthodox measures to BTPN and changed the way bankers think about the segment.
Ratih hired nearly all women employees to serve their 100% women customers. These employees are mostly high-school graduates who can speak the local language of BTPN’s customers. By hiring these very young, local women, Ratih again empowered them by giving them opportunities to work at a big bank.
“It was a combination between how to effectively reach our customers, who are all women, and also an operation that had to make sense. The result was a unique entity composed of 100% women customers and 100 women, high school-graduated field officers,” she says.
Ratih expanded BTPN’s microbanking business and rebranded it into BTPN Syariah. The unit was later spun off in 2014 and went public in 2018. What started as a three-people project ended up as a financial respected bank employing 12,000 staff by the time she left. BTPN Syariah provided financing to over 5 million underprivileged families in 2019. At the end of that year, BTPN Syariah’s market capitalization was recorded at over USD 2 billion, with a total asset of IDR 15.4 trillion, net profit after tax of IDR 1.4 trillion, ample liquid assets of IDR 5.6 trillion and strong capital adequacy ratio of 44%.
“They were unbankable because they do not have collaterals, financial records nor legal documentation, we bankers had set up products and infrastructure that did not match with them. Must we wait for them to change, for another 50-70 years, and wait for them to have all these documents, or must we change?”
Ratih believes that to expand the space further, each venture has to commercially make sense for every stakeholder. Only through business can professional talents, good governance, right investors, clear profitability path can be attracted. This will empower programs at the bottom of the pyramid and make them sustainable. She also recommends using simple metrics to ensure the venture is moving in the right direction in terms of creating social impact.
Ratih’s next venture will involve bringing more underprivileged families out of poverty, once again demonstrating how to invest in women. She wants to focus on issues such as improving women capacity beyond lending, and hopes to contribute to that space somehow.
