Managing director and chief executive officer Tay Ah Lek said Public Bank will focus on productivity and cost efficiency going forward, apart from its current focus of growing the retail banking’s organic growth

He was speaking to more than 6,000 shareholders at the bank’s 50th annual general meeting here on Monday.

The banking group achieved another profit milestone in 2015 with pre-tax profit of RM6.49bil, crossing the RM6bil mark for the first time

Tay said several key performance indexes for 2016 have been indentified and these include targeting a loan growth of 8 per cent-9 per cent, deposit growth of 7 per cent-8 per cent and gross impaired loan ratio of below 1 per cent.

For cost to income ratio, Tay said Public Bank preferred this not to exceed 33 per cent. Its cost to income ratio now is 30 per cent.

Tay said the bank would also focus on the fee-based income business by being less capital intensive.

“We would be targeting 15 per cent growth for fee based income this year,” he said, adding the bank recorded 17.8 per cent growth in 2015.

He did not comment on the bank’s succession plan.