Public Bank Shift Focus

Amid shrinking industry's net interest margins, Public Bank Bhd - said it will focus its efforts on beefing up non-interest income."The industry outlook will remain challenging moving forward. We will look very hard into increasing the fee based income and this is one of our strategies going forward," it's managing director and chief executive officer Tan Sri Tay Ah Lek said at its AGM on Monday.

"We will look into increasing the income from fees," he said. Tay said the industry's “margin squeeze” will continue with the intense competition. "We can expect the margins will continue to be squeezed and this will affect the returns on equity (ROE) moving forward. But our ROE is the still the highest among our peers at 16.5%," he said.