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Indonesia's planned merger of three state-owned Islamic banks will create an entity with scale comparable with the biggest local lenders. The proposed merger between Bank BRIsyariah, Bank Syariah Mandiri and Bank BNI Syariah will create an entity with between 220 trillion rupiah and 225 trillion rupiah in assets. Bank BRIsyariah will be the final entity after the merger, expected to be completed by February 2021. It will be Indonesia's seventh or eighth biggest bank by assets. Analysts expect more M&A activity within the Indonesian banking space, mainly for smaller banks to remain competitive. Currently, the nation's biggest banks are Bank Central Asia, Bank Mandiri, Bank Rakyat Indonesia and Bank Negara Indonesia.

In #Indonesia the Islamic banks’ market share has remained below 5% for the last several years, despite having existed since the 1990s. Now the State-Owned Enterprises Ministry is mulling a proposal to allow Islamic lender subsidiaries owned by the four state-run banks to be merged into two new entities. The ministry’s assistant Gatot Trihargo said the state would still control the two new sharia lenders as majority shareholders. He added that at least two of the four sharia banks should be merged in order to become a BUKU III lender, which has capital between Rp 5 trillion and Rp 30 trillion. Bank Aceh, a regional development bank, is currently in the process of being converted into an Islamic lender, while Bank Syariah Mandiri is seeking strategic investors from the Middle East.

Indonesia's Bank Syariah Mandiri, a unit of state-owned Bank Mandiri, is targetting total assets worth 100 trillion rupiah ($7.72 billion) by 2017, up 49 percent from 67 trillion rupiah as of December, the Investor Daily newspaper reported, quoting Bank Syariah Mandiri finance director Agus Dwi Handaya.

Police have named two more suspects in an alleged Bank Syariah Mandiri scam implicating three bank officials, bringing the total number of suspects to six. The two latest suspects are Hen Hen Gunawan and doctor Rizky Adiansyah. Gunawan allegedly used the identity cards of his 26 employees to embezzle up to Rp 12.4 billion ($1.1 million) from the bank through its loan scheme. Rizky, meanwhile, allegedly borrowed ID cards of some of his neighbors to siphon Rp 12.2 billion from the bank. These two new suspects were ‘instructed’ by an accounting officer of the Bogor branch of BSM, John Lopulisa. John was earlier arrested, along with the head of BSM‘s primary branch in Bogor, M. Agustinus Masrie, the head of a smaller Bogor branch, Haerulli Hermawan, and Iyan Permana. The fraud is believed to have cost the bank Rp 59 billion.

Bank Syariah Mandiri is targeting its profit to increase 50 percent this year as it seeks to boost its branches across Indonesia. Yuslam Fauzi, president director of BSM, said that the lender aims to reach profit of Rp 1.2 trillion ($123.7 million) this year from Rp 800 billion last year. He added that the bank's assets also increased to Rp 55 trillion. However, shares of Bank Mandiri fell 0.5 percent to Rp 9,550 on the Indonesia Stock Exchange on Friday.

Bank Syariah Mandiri is set to sell shares in an initial public offering next year, aiming to raise more than Rp 1 trillion ($103 million) as the first Islamic lender at the Stock Exchange. Having the largest Muslim population in the world, Indonesia lags behind its neighbor Malaysia in terms of the development of Islamic finance. The total assets of Islamic compliant lenders in Indonesia accounts for around 4.7 percent of the total banking assets in the country. Moreover, it is home to 120 commercial lenders with combined total assets of Rp 4,000 trillion.
Bank Syariah Mandiri is one of a few units of Bank Mandiri, the country’s largest lender by assets. Other units include Bank Sinar Harapan Bali and Mandiri Sekuritas.

It seems that Bank Indonesia (BI) plans to launch a regulation to limit the pawning of gold at sharia banks, as most of bank customers are inclined to use the service for speculation.
Three sharia banks—Bank Syariah Mandiri, Bank Rakyat Indonesia Syariah and Bank Negara Indonesia Syariah—want to end their gold-pawning services following the central bank’s move, being aware of the risks pawning gold carries.
The central bank’s new regulations will influence 137,272 customers who hold sharia pawning accounts.

Maybank Islamic (MI) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Bank Syariah Mandiri (BSM), Indonesia, to set up cross border collaboration in all Islamic treasury and trade finance matters.
This collaboration is going to set the terms of cooperation between the two institutions in relation to enhancing cross-border liquidity flows and, as well as, increasing and diversifying the application of Islamic financial solutions.