Grace Santoso · Chief Executive Officer · Singapore / Southeast Asia
| Capacity | Committees |
|---|---|
| Ready to chair | Board risk committee, after a full year as a member · Credit or risk committee of a non-bank lender or payments business |
| Ready to join | Risk committee · Audit committee (not as its financial expert) · Nominating committee |
From mid-2027 I am looking for two or three non-executive seats in Singapore, Malaysia or Indonesia, in businesses where credit, funding, scam risk and shareholder governance all need board attention. A payments or remittance business serving migrant workers and small merchants, a licensed digital bank in its first credit cycle, or a non-bank lender to small businesses outside Indonesian banking are the settings where my experience would transfer most directly. I would like to join the risk committee and, after a full year, to chair it if the board wished. I am not interested in a seat offered for my title or contacts, and I would decline a board that wanted a banker's name without a working committee role. Before going further I would want to understand what the chair believes the board lacks, how the controlling or founding shareholder engages with independent directors, and what the company's supervisor has said about its risk management.
Served as a director
Board of Directors (management board); President Director from June 2021, Director of Risk Management 2017–2021
February 2017–present
Member of the bank's Board of Directors under Indonesia's two-tier structure; accountable to the general meeting and supervised by the Board of Commissioners.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Board of Commissioners; Risk Monitoring Committee; Audit Committee
2017–present
Presents the quarterly risk profile, loan-at-risk and scam-loss reports, the dividend recommendation and related-party proposals; attends committee meetings by invitation, apart from sessions without management.
Served as a director
Board of Commissioners (non-executive member)
2009–2012
Non-executive commissioner of a vehicle and equipment finance company owned by Halsworth Asia Bank, overseeing credit, collections and audit findings.
Reported to a committee
Risk Monitoring Committee of the Board of Commissioners
2013–2016
Reported quarterly on micro and small-business portfolio quality, including the 2015 suspension of lending in three provinces.
Presented to the Board or a committee
Board risk committee of the group
2010–2011
Presented regional reviews of the SME loan book and scorecard performance after the 2008–2009 downturn.
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank applies to independent directors of Indian companies. My career has been in Indonesia and Singapore, and the seats I am considering are in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, where it plays no part, so I have not registered and would do so only if an Indian appointment were ever proposed.
I would bring a board the experience of taking a bank through a credit cycle from the chief executive's chair, and before that from the risk director's. I have recognised losses early at the cost of a dividend, managed a loan book in which a fifth of the loans had been restructured, and explained both to a controlling shareholder, independent commissioners and OJK in the same quarter. I know how restructured loans, special-mention loans and provisions can tell different stories about the same borrowers, and which questions bring the true one to the surface.
I would also bring a working knowledge of three problems that many financial boards in Southeast Asia now face together: funding that can leave quickly when rates or rumours move, social-engineering scams that defeat conventional fraud controls, and the governance of companies with a controlling shareholder. I have taken decisions on each, with figures and costs I can explain and mistakes I can name.
My natural committee is risk, which I could chair after a year as a member. I could serve on an audit committee but would not present myself as its financial expert, because my background is credit and risk rather than accounting. I could also contribute to a nominating committee on chief executive succession in a family-controlled company, having been the outcome of one such process and the designer of another.
In November 2021 I recommended cutting Kartadana's payout from 45% of profit to 15% while we re-underwrote Rp 11.8 trillion of pandemic-restructured loans. The family's holding company serviced its own borrowings from our dividend, and the founder's son said so in the meeting. I did not argue that the family's need was illegitimate. I set out what the restructured book might cost under three scenarios, what capital each would leave and what OJK would expect to see, and I asked the commissioners to decide the payout against those numbers rather than against the holding company's calendar. They approved the cut. As a non-executive, I would want management to put a shareholder's interest on the table openly, and then to show the board the evidence that should decide the matter.
When we introduced scam holds in 2024, the easy report for the Risk Monitoring Committee would have shown losses falling and nothing else. I asked for the same report to show the complaints, the fall in our app rating and the merchant payments we had delayed. One commissioner asked why management would volunteer bad news about its own decision. My answer was that the committee could only judge whether the friction was proportionate if it saw both sides, and that the complaints were how we would find the mistakes in our design. They did: the merchant complaints led us to tier the rule. On a board I would ask for the cost of a control alongside its benefit.
In 2010, as a non-executive commissioner of Halsworth's Indonesian multifinance company, I was asked to support a plan to grow motorcycle financing by lowering down payments for traders. The projections were attractive and the parent bank was keen. I asked to see repayment vintages for the loans made with the lowest down payments over the previous two years before I agreed. Management had not cut the data that way. When they did, early arrears in that group were nearly double the rest of the book. The board approved a smaller pilot with closer monitoring instead. I took from it that a non-executive's most useful contribution is often a question about how the evidence has been cut.
In my first quarter I would read three years of board and risk committee papers, the most recent supervisory correspondence that the board is entitled to see, and the minutes of any meeting where a significant credit, funding or related-party decision was taken. I would meet the chair, the chief executive, the chief risk officer, the head of internal audit and the external auditor separately, and I would ask each of them what the board has not yet been shown.
In the second and third quarters I would sit through a full cycle of risk committee meetings without proposing changes, unless I saw a matter that could not wait. I would ask to visit the business as customers experience it: a collections team, a merchant onboarding process, a fraud operations floor. I would ask to see one recent loss in detail, from the original approval onwards.
At the end of twelve months I would ask the chair two things: whether my questions had improved the board's discussions, and whether my years in Indonesian banking had sharpened my view of a different business or narrowed it. A new director's first year is mostly for listening, and I would rather the board saw me use it that way than mistake activity for contribution.
Until mid-2027 my executive role at Kartadana comes first. Indonesia's bank governance rules sharply limit the positions a serving bank director may hold elsewhere, and I hold none outside the bank. Any conversation about a future seat would be disclosed to our President Commissioner before it went further.
After I leave, I would not join the board of an Indonesian bank or lender to small businesses that competes with Kartadana for at least two years, and I would not join any company that is a significant borrower from Kartadana or part of the Tjandrakusuma family's businesses. I would disclose my Kartadana shareholding and decide with the new board whether to reduce it.
If a conflict arose after appointment, I would declare it to the chair, leave the discussion and ensure the minutes recorded my absence. If recusals became frequent, I would step down rather than hold a seat I could not use. I would keep Kartadana's confidential information, including supervisory matters and customer data, out of any other boardroom, even where it seemed relevant to the discussion.
I am a serving bank President Director until mid-2027. Before any appointment I would disclose my Kartadana shareholding, acquired through the bank's executive share plan, any continuing arrangements with the bank, and any relationship between Kartadana, the Tjandrakusuma family's businesses and the company concerned. Boards in Singapore and Malaysia assess independence under their own codes and, for financial institutions, the expectations of MAS or Bank Negara Malaysia; in Indonesia OJK assesses commissioners. I would leave that judgement to them and not describe myself as independent in advance.