From the special assets desk to the President Director's office

Mandate

Serve as the bank's first President Director from outside the founding family, take the loan book through the end of pandemic relief and move a family-controlled bank from personal authority to written rules.

Outcomes

• Re-underwrote Rp 11.8tn of pandemic-restructured loans; loan at risk fell from 21.4% (December 2021) to 10.2% (June 2026).
• Raised current and savings accounts from 31% to 46% of third-party funds while cutting special-rate time deposits by Rp 6.4tn.
• Reshaped the network from 364 to 306 offices, converting 41 rural cash offices into lending posts and adding 2,300 agents; 91% of deposits at closed offices retained.
• Cut customers' reported scam losses from Rp 87bn (2023) to Rp 26bn (2025) with transfer holds, account-opening checks and a published reimbursement framework.
• Introduced independent-commissioner decisions, with family recusal, for related-party transactions above Rp 25bn; related-party exposure 8.2% of capital.

Decisions in context

I became President Director when the founder, Hendrawan Tjandrakusuma, stepped back at seventy-seven, on the recommendation of a nomination committee led by independent commissioners. The appointment carried two mandates, one stated and one understood. The stated one was to take the bank through the end of pandemic relief without a capital problem, which meant recognising restructured losses early and cutting the dividend in my first year. The understood one was to show that a bank built around one founder's authority could be run on written rules once he had gone. I reorganised the Board of Directors around clearer lines between business, risk and operations, rebuilt our deposit franchise around transaction accounts, reshaped the network and introduced controls against scams. I report to the general meeting through the annual report and work most closely with the President Commissioner and the chairs of the Audit and Risk Monitoring Committees.

Reason for the move

Current appointment. My second term ends at the 2027 annual general meeting, and I have told the Board of Commissioners that I will not seek a third.

Mandate

Respond to a supervisory review that had found weaknesses in credit risk management, separate credit approval from the business lines and rebuild early warning and collections policy.

Outcomes

• Moved credit approval for loans above Rp 1bn from business heads to an independent credit function within twelve months.
• Built an early-warning list that business lines could read but not edit; 70% of later non-performing loans had appeared on it at least six months earlier.
• Reduced gross non-performing loans from 3.9% in 2016 to 2.6% at the end of 2019.
• Wrote the 2020 restructuring criteria under which about a fifth of the loan book was restructured during the pandemic.

Decisions in context

Pak Hendrawan recruited me after a supervisory review had questioned how the bank approved and monitored credit. Business heads could approve their own loans, early warning depended on relationship managers volunteering bad news, and collections policy varied by region. I joined the Board of Directors after OJK's fit-and-proper assessment and spent my first year separating approval from origination, which was unpopular with the business and essential to everything that followed. I built an early-warning list the business could not edit, standardised collections and gave the Risk Monitoring Committee a quarterly view of vintages by province. When the pandemic closed markets in 2020, I wrote the criteria we used to restructure loans, including the requirement that each restructuring record the borrower's own explanation of how they would repay. That requirement made the 2021 re-underwriting possible.

Reason for the move

Appointed President Director at the June 2021 annual general meeting on the recommendation of the Remuneration and Nomination Committee.

Mandate

Build a micro and small-business lending business that could grow without repeating the loss experience of the bank's earlier attempts.

Outcomes

• Grew micro and small-business loans from Rp 2.1tn to Rp 7.8tn between 2012 and 2016.
• Organised lending around 640 market and production clusters, each served by named loan officers.
• Halted new micro lending in three Kalimantan and Sumatra provinces in 2015 when non-performing micro loans reached 6.9%; they fell to 3.4% by the end of 2016.
• Replaced loan-officer incentives based on disbursement volume with measures weighted to twelve-month repayment quality.

Decisions in context

I left Singapore for Jakarta to work where most Indonesian businesses actually are. Bentala had tried micro lending twice before and retreated both times after losses, so the mandate came with scepticism attached. I organised the business around market and production clusters rather than branch catchments: a loan officer covered a traditional market or a cluster of furniture workshops, visited every borrower and knew the traders on either side. The model grew quickly and, for three years, performed well. The 2015 fall in coal and palm oil prices exposed what growth had hidden. In parts of Kalimantan and Sumatra our borrowers depended on wages from plantations and mines, and our loan officers had been paid on disbursements. I stopped new lending in three provinces, changed the incentive plan and resumed only when vintages recovered. It was the most useful mistake I have helped to make.

Reason for the move

Recruited by Bank Kartadana's founder to become director of risk management after a supervisory review.

Mandate

Build consistent credit policy and scoring for small and medium enterprise lending across four countries with different regulators and data quality.

Outcomes

• Introduced common SME scorecards in four countries, cutting median approval time from 19 to 8 working days.
• During 2008–2009, kept credit lines open for exporters with confirmed orders and reduced them for others; SME credit losses peaked at 1.9%, below the bank's stress case.
• Served from 2009 on the Board of Commissioners of the bank's Indonesian multifinance subsidiary.
• Presented SME portfolio reviews to the group board risk committee in 2010 and 2011.

Decisions in context

This role took me from approving loans to designing the rules other people would use to approve them. Halsworth wanted one approach to small-business credit across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, each with its own supervisor, from MAS to Bank Negara Malaysia, and very different data. I led the scorecard work and learnt quickly how much a model trained on growth years could miss. In late 2008 exporters' orders disappeared within a quarter, and the scores did not move. We kept lines open for borrowers who could show confirmed orders and reduced them for those who could not, a judgement made by people, not models. From 2009 I also sat on the Board of Commissioners of the bank's Indonesian multifinance company, my first non-executive seat. By 2012 I wanted to run a lending business myself rather than write policy for others.

Reason for the move

Moved to Bank Bentala in Jakarta to run a lending business directly rather than set policy for one.

Mandate

Rebuild commercial lending in Indonesia after the crisis, with credit standards that would survive the next downturn.

Outcomes

• Rebuilt the Indonesian commercial book from about Rp 4tn to Rp 9tn with non-performing loans below 2% throughout.
• Introduced site visits and family-ownership mapping for every borrower above US$1 million.
• Promoted to head of commercial credit for Indonesia in 2004.
• Completed a part-time master's degree in management in 2005.

Decisions in context

Halsworth sent me back to Jakarta to help rebuild a commercial book that the crisis had shrunk by more than half. Many of our new borrowers were family-owned manufacturers of the kind I had spent four years restructuring, and I brought that experience into every credit file. I asked who in the family actually made decisions, which assets sat outside the company and which relatives' businesses depended on the same cash. Those questions slowed approvals and irritated some relationship managers, but our losses stayed low through the period. I became head of commercial credit for Indonesia in 2004, leading fourteen analysts, and studied for a master's degree in the evenings. The role taught me how Indonesian family firms govern themselves, which became the most useful knowledge I took to Kartadana.

Reason for the move

Promoted to a regional role in Singapore covering small and medium enterprise credit in four countries.

Mandate

Analyse and help restructure Indonesian and Thai corporate loans impaired by the Asian financial crisis.

Outcomes

• Worked on 37 corporate restructurings, 24 of which were completed with the borrower still operating.
• Built the unit's first cash-flow model for borrowers with dollar debt and rupiah revenue.
• Promoted to associate in 1999, two years ahead of the usual timetable.
• Translated and summarised Indonesian court and creditor-meeting documents for the unit.

Decisions in context

I joined Halsworth's credit department in Singapore in July 1997 and within weeks was reassigned to the special assets unit, because the bank needed people who could read Indonesian accounts and speak to Indonesian owners. My manager, Alastair Breck, had worked through two earlier cycles in Hong Kong and taught me that a restructuring succeeds or fails on the honesty of the first meeting. I built cash-flow models for borrowers whose dollar debts had outgrown their rupiah revenues, sat in creditor meetings in Jakarta and Surabaya and learnt to recognise the owner who was buying time. Twenty-four of the thirty-seven restructurings I worked on ended with the business still operating. The years were formative in a specific way: I have never since been comfortable when a bank and a borrower agree to wait.

Reason for the move

Transferred to Jakarta to rebuild commercial credit in Indonesia.