In the past few days, Grab has been spotted putting up vacancies on their Linkedin page and website for digibank roles to be based in Malaysia. This development is ahead of Bank Negara Malaysia formally announcing the winners of the digital banking bid.
The central bank is rumored to be dishing out the licenses during its upcoming fintech conference MyFintechWeek, which takes place on the 24th – 28th January 2021.
On LinkedIn, Grab has put up vacancies for 7 positions which include; Chief Risk Officer, Head of SME Lending, Head of Retail Lending, Head of Data, and more.
Meanwhile, on their careers page, they’ve also put several positions as well.
In July, Grab confirmed that it will be entering the bid for Malaysia’s digital banking license alongside Singtel and “Malaysian investors”. In Singapore, the Grab-Singtel consortium was among the four successful applicants who secured a digital banking license.
While it is not explicitly stated that this position is for the Malaysian digital bank operations, the language used in their job ad seems to indicate that it is likely.
“Grab is leading a consortium to apply for Digital Bank license and build a bank with the right foundation – using data, technology and trust to solve problems and serve customers,”
This would either suggest that Grab has a strong degree of certainty that they will be granted a digital banking license from Bank Negara Malaysia or that the regulator has already notified the players who are successful with their bid ahead of the formal announcement.
We’ve reached out to the Grab team for comments and will update this story as and when we hear back from them.
UPDATE 1.43pm
Since the publishing of this article, Grab has removed the word “Digibank” from all its Linkedin job postings in Malaysia and all their digibank job posting on Grab’s website seems to be removed with the exception of the compliance role.