Sole proprietors do not always get treated well when they walk into a bank branch to ask for a loan, said Hildah Hamzah, Deputy CEO and Chief Operating Officer of GXBank.

Some of them do not look the part, they do not sound the part, and the embarrassment of admitting they need help keeps many away from formal credit altogether.

GXBank’s own lending data shows how many had been left outside the system.

Of the digital bank’s MSME borrowers, 87% had never held a loan before, Hildah told Fintech News Network’s Fintech Fireside Asia podcast.

Bank Negara Malaysia had also recently rolled out its Digital Bank Inclusion Monitoring and Evaluation (DIME) framework, giving the 87% figure more weight in the wider inclusion debate.

GXBank had also just released a fresh batch of figures, which is what brought Hildah onto the podcast in the first place.

By her account, GXBank crossed RM1 billion in loans in a single month for the first time recently, and its deposit book has also passed RM1 billion.

More than 60% of its depositors come from the B40 and M40 income brackets, Malaysia’s bottom 40% and middle 40% of households by income.

Just over 30% of retail depositors show spending patterns, such as recurring advertising payments, that look more like a small business than a personal account.

Hildah explained that pattern is what pushed GXBank to build a lending product for the segment already visible in its own customer base.

Underwriting Borrowers Other Banks Turn Away

GXBank’s approach to micro and small business lending centres on combining personal and business bank statements through its own credit models.

An approval can take as little as ten minutes, or up to 24 hours where a third-party guarantee is involved.

The guarantee comes from CGC Digital, the fintech arm of Credit Guarantee Corporation Malaysia Berhad.

GXBank expanded that partnership in May 2026, raising financing limits on its GX FlexiLoan product to RM150,000.

The bank also agreed to accept personal bank statements from sole proprietors who had never formally separated business money from personal money.

Malaysia’s MSME financing gap runs to an estimated RM90 billion, according to GXBank, and this is the slice it is aiming at.

Ask Hildah who this segment actually is, and she doesn’t dress it up.

“When you’re a sole proprietor, you don’t look the part, you don’t sound the part,” she noted, describing the reception some small business owners get at traditional bank branches.

Hildah Hamzah

“It’s embarrassing, isn’t it? You don’t understand the paperwork, and sometimes people don’t have the patience for you. The fact that you can do this in the privacy of your own home means you don’t need to feel embarrassed.”

Inclusion Still Needs a Business Model

Put the profit-versus-purpose question to Hildah directly, and she doesn’t hedge.

Her answer goes back to zakat, the Islamic practice of giving a portion of one’s wealth to those in need.

“You can only pay zakat when you make money,” she said. “Every business that wants to do good must first feed itself and take care of the people that work for it.”

In her order of operations, the bank first has to take care of its staff, meet shareholder expectations and remain responsible for depositors’ money.

Only then, she argues, can the bank keep serving underserved customers at scale.

It is not just philosophy, either. Malaysia’s digital banks face a five-year deadline to graduate out of their foundational operating restrictions, and BNM’s DIME framework ties that graduation directly to inclusion outcomes.

“If you don’t serve that developmental inclusion mandate, you don’t graduate,” Hildah argued, “and any bank that doesn’t graduate will not be profitable.”

@fintechnewsnetwork

Is Malaysia’s First Digital Bank Keeping Its Promise? Serve the financial inclusion mandate or you don’t graduate, and a bank that doesn’t graduate never turns a profit. @gxbankmy has crossed a RM1 billion loan book, and 87% of its small business borrowers had never taken a loan before. Deputy CEO Hildah Hamzah on whether Malaysia’s first digital bank has delivered. FinancialInclusion GXBank FintechNews Malaysia

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