OCBC Bank has offered targeted support measures to assist customers across its core markets that are affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. These include Singapore, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong and Macau. The tailored measures have been put in place to ensure that they are able to manage their cashflows to overcome the market challenges.
With the global economic prospects likely to be dimmer as a result of the outbreak, OCBC bank announced that they will work closely with customers, whether individuals, small- or medium-sized enterprises or large corporates, to mitigate the fall-out from the outbreak and to help them tide over this difficult period. Flexibility is offered to accommodate each customer’s financial position.
These measures include allowing customers to restructure their loans including home mortgages and business loans, and providing a moratorium on principal repayment for loans, including home mortgages and business loans.
Another measure offered is to extend bridging loans in the form of additional working capital financing to affected businesses.
OCBC Bank’s Group Chief Executive Officer Samuel Tsien said: “We will not put a cap on the help that we will extend to our customers. This COVID-19 outbreak is unfortunate and unanticipated. It is our banking and social responsibility to support our customers to help them overcome this market challenge which is not of their own making.”
“We will help each of our customers as the case may justify and not on a first-come, first-serve basis. As we at OCBC put it, we must be ‘simply spot on’ on the assistance that our customers need,” he continued.
Reiterating the long relationships his bank held with its customers and clients, Tsien pledged that OCBC remains steadfast in its support, despite the large scale of the situation. “I am confident that this event will come to an end in a few months, though the longer-term implications may need some time to fully recover. Still, it is just an event – event comes, and event goes. We will do all that is necessary to pull through together with and for our customers,” he concluded.