MAYBANK became the first financial institution to officially formalise its partnership with Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre (MaGIC) in efforts to further boost start-ups across the region.
The collaboration between Maybank and MaGIC started through a series of joint initiatives since April. A signing ceremony was held at the Maybank Innovation Centre between Maybank and MaGIC to pave the way for future initiatives.
Representing Maybank was Corporate Development & Innovation head Amran Hassan while MaGIC was represented by its chief executive officer Cheryl Yeoh.
The tie-up aims to boost entrepreneurship in Asean, earmarked as a catalyst for economic growth whereby Maybank would leverage on MaGIC‘s expertise, regional reach and resources to nurture upcoming local and regional start-ups.
One of the key roles for Maybank is to be the financial services partner for MaGIC’s Asean Centre of Entrepreneurship (ACE), which is a start-up support services platform offering services such as legal advice, IP consultations, visa application and company secretarial services through its partners.
This platform will support Malay-sian start-ups looking to expand into Asean countries and for Asean start-ups to expand into Malaysia.
Yeoh said the partnership would help in boosting the development of start-ups and social enterprise initiatives not only in Malaysia, but in the region.
“We are pleased with this collaboration with Maybank, both as a main partner for our start-up support services platform as well as providing the opportunities for fintech start-ups to grow locally and regionally.
“We are encouraged by the support we are getting from the private sector and Maybank as one of the early driver for private sector opportunities,” she said.
In return, Maybank will act as an advisory partner to MaGIC’s Accelerator Programmes and Academy, especially in building viable propositions in the context of regional opportunities in the financial services industry, help facilitate market validation and identify potential “go-to-market” partners.
Amran said Maybank had always placed importance on innovation as a key organisational competency that would help identify and shape new sources of competitive advantages.
“The collaboration with MaGIC will allow Maybank to play a more prominent role in supporting the start-up ecosystem regionally.
“We have taken the market lead in the high-growth start-up ecosystem as part of our efforts to support promising technology start-ups across the markets where we operate.
“We will continue to work with strategic industry partners in providing competitive platforms in our efforts to help build Asean into a global centre for innovation,” he said.