TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - State-owned lender Bank Mandiri is encouraging its customers to migrate to local investment as an effort to boost national economic growth.

"The bank that manages Wealth Management Banking has indeed a role to educate customers to put their deposits into an investment," said the bank business and network director Hery Gunardi during a customer gathering event entitled Beyond Wealth 2019 in Jakarta, Wednesday, August 7.

Hery explained that Indonesia has many investment products such as government debt papers (SBN), state retail bond (ORI), Sukuk or Islamic bonds, and reksadana.

Local investment is considered more effective and productive in financing national development. Besides, it is said to be more profitable in the long term.

"There are various kinds of investments that have a high risk, medium risk, and low risk. This (local investment) provides a better opportunity than funds if the deposit or savings rates are limited," Hery added.

According to him, Mandiri's wealth management group manages more than 55,000 private and priority customers, supported by 63 outlets spread across 12 Indonesian regions. The managed funds also amounted to Rp205.3 trillion, increased by 6.75 percent compared to that of last year’s June.

To support the management of customers’ funds, the state bank will develop an online-based digital wealth platform, which is planned to launch in 2020.

"This digital platform aims to facilitate customers to run online transactions to buy investment products, such as reksadana and retail bonds," Hery remarked.

Bank Mandiri also cooperates with Swiss-based financial institutions that have expertise in the private sector and investment banking. The partnership was carried out to provide offshore investment products to wealthy Indonesian customers settling in Singapore.

ANTARA