Hong Leong Bank (HLB) is strengthening its in-house technology capabilities through talent development, AI adoption and cloud modernisation.
The bank has followed its “Digital At The Core” strategy for more than a decade, focusing on building internal engineering expertise and maintaining ownership of its technology platforms.
A key part of this approach is its Group Technology Graduate Trainee Programme, which gives graduates practical experience across different technology functions.
Graduate trainees move into permanent roles
The 12-month programme consists of four rotations designed to develop technical expertise and operational skills.
All 10 trainees in the graduating cohort have taken permanent roles at HLB. The cohort included recruits from the GamudaAI talent pipeline.
The graduates joined teams including IT Governance & Assurance, Application Support, IT Services & Operations, Security Management, Innovation CoE and the CEO Transformation Office.
During their rotations, trainees deployed AI chatbots powered by Google’s Agent Development Kit (ADK) and UiPath robotic process automation (RPA) tools.
They also automated IT Risk Dispensation e-Forms, modernised IT service and problem management operations, and improved cloud infrastructure efficiency.
Ten new trainees have joined the programme, with backgrounds in data science, computing, cybersecurity, information security, mathematics and engineering.
AI initiatives extend across the bank
HLB also runs an internal AI Ignite Programme that encourages employees across departments to propose practical AI use cases.
Selected employees become “AI Champions” and receive resources to develop their ideas.
“AI will not replace people, but it will replace people who refuse to use it,”
said William Streitberg, Chief Information and Technology Officer, Hong Leong Bank.
“Building our technology in-house gives us the freedom and control to build fast, fail fast, and learn fast, turning every challenge into immediate institutional knowledge.”
Cloud modernisation cuts software deployment time
HLB also won the Virtualization and Cloud-Native Development category at the Red Hat APAC Innovation Awards 2026 for Malaysia.
The award recognised its efforts to modernise a critical online business application to address performance bottlenecks and improve scalability.
HLB’s technology teams moved the application from a monolithic framework to a containerised environment using Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Application Foundations.
The bank also deployed Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization to manage virtual machines and containers on a single platform.
According to HLB, the changes cut software deployment cycles from months to weeks and eliminated manual virtual machine patching for containerised workloads.
The new infrastructure also enables applications to scale dynamically during peak traffic.
Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Malaysia, based on image by HLB
