AmBank Takes the Malaysia CSR Crown After Maybank’s Global Win

AmBank Group won Malaysia’s Best Bank for Corporate Responsibility at the Euromoney Awards for Excellence 2026. The country title was announced on 14 August 2026, weeks after Maybank took the world award in the same category.

The two trophies are not the same prize. Maybank’s world file is built on social financing and large empowerment programmes. AmBank’s Malaysia file is a five-pillar local package run through the AmGroup Foundation, on a much smaller cheque.

Maybank Took the World Title in July

On 23 July 2026, Maybank said it had secured 13 awards across global, regional and country categories. The lead prize was its first global title, World’s Best Bank for Corporate Responsibility, and it was one of only two Asia-headquartered banks to receive a global award in this cycle.

In Malaysia, Maybank listed a seventh Best Bank title since 2018, plus Best Bank for Diversity and Inclusion, Best Bank for ESG, Best Bank for Large Corporates, and a debt capital markets prize for Maybank Investment Bank. Corporate responsibility did not appear on that Malaysia list.

The world-title citation put 2025 social impact at MYR29.4 billion, reaching more than 1.49 million individuals and small businesses. Almost all of that was social financing: MYR29.33 billion of affordable lending, restructuring help and inclusive insurance for 491,637 customers.

The closer comparison with a CSR budget is the empowerment slice. The citation put MYR73.81 million across 131 social empowerment programmes, supporting 997,797 people, with a further MYR31 million of zakat-funded work reaching 117,284 Asnaf clients. Since 2014, the group has put MYR76.54 billion (USD 18.8 billion) into social financing and empowerment, reaching more than 5.5 million people.

It is a great honour for Maybank to be recognised as a champion for Corporate Responsibility globally, alongside multiple regional and country-level awards received from Euromoney.

Dato’ Sri Khairussaleh Ramli, President and Group CEO of Maybank, in the bank’s 23 July 2026 statement

President and Group CEO Dato’ Sri Khairussaleh Ramli tied the haul to the group’s Humanising Financial Services purpose and its Roar 30 plan. The country corporate-responsibility medal was still open for someone else to claim.

AmBank’s Country Trophy Arrived a Month Later

AMMB Holdings Berhad, which trades as AmBank Group, issued its own statement on 14 August 2026. Euromoney’s Malaysia country-winner pages had already gone up on 17 July, with Maybank named Best Bank. AmBank’s release named the missing country prize: Malaysia’s Best Bank for Corporate Responsibility.

Group chief executive officer Jamie Ling said the Winning Together purpose runs past customers and shareholders and takes in the wider community, and he credited staff for the result. Shazman Shahid, head of group corporate communications and marketing and supervisor of the AmGroup Foundation, said the foundation would stay on purposeful work.

The group is Malaysia’s sixth-largest banking group by assets, with RM207.7 billion of assets, a RM21.8 billion market cap at the end of March 2026, more than 7,600 staff and more than three million customers. It last took a Euromoney country sustainability prize on 12 September 2024, when it was named Malaysia’s Best Bank for ESG in Singapore.

The 2026 awards season ran on a fixed calendar. Rest-of-world submissions closed on 27 February 2026, winners were told in May, London hosted a ceremony in July, and the Asia-Pacific night was held in Singapore on 10 September 2026.

THE 2026 AWARDS CALENDAR

1. 27 February 2026: Rest-of-world submissions close.
2. May 2026: Rest-of-world winners are notified.
3. 17 July 2026: Country-winner pages go up, with Maybank as Malaysia’s Best Bank.
4. 23 July 2026: Maybank announces the world corporate-responsibility title and 12 other prizes.
5. 14 August 2026: AmBank announces the Malaysia corporate-responsibility title.
6. 10 September 2026: The Asia-Pacific ceremony is held in Singapore.

AmBank’s statement did not say who collected the trophy in Singapore. The delay between the July winner pages and the 14 August release still left the group with a country medal it can print on sustainability slides for a full year.

What Euromoney Scores

The corporate-responsibility category is not a popularity poll and it is not the same file as Best Bank for ESG or Best Bank for Sustainable Finance. Those sit in separate lanes. The published corporate responsibility category evaluation criteria ask banks for a social-impact strategy they can evidence, with benefits that reach past their own staff.

Judges wanted calendar-year 2025 data, with supporting figures also at end-2024 and the first half of 2025. Global, regional and country titles are awarded from the same rulebook, which is how one bank can take the world prize while another takes a single country.

WHAT THE JURY ASKED FOR

• Reach: Number of beneficiaries from CSR programmes.
• Cash: Absolute CSR investment, plus CSR as a share of the bank’s total investment.
• Income test: Ratio of CSR spend to operating income.
• System: Strategy, governance, investment priorities and measurable outcomes.
• Proof: Examples of programmes, economic impact of projects, and the team that runs them.

A mid-sized Malaysian bank with a clean five-pillar map, named partners and a beneficiary count can beat a larger peer at country level even when that peer has already won the world title. The metrics reward a dossier the research team can score, not a league table of who wrote the largest cheque.

RM1.8 Million Against a RM2.1 Billion Profit

AmBank’s FY2026 sustainability report, covering 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, records over RM1.8 million in CSR activities, 167 community programmes and 31,993 beneficiaries. Zakat is booked separately at RM3.99 million for education, medical aid, poverty relief and entrepreneurship.

That CSR line is under 0.1% of the group’s record PATMI of RM2.1 billion. The precise profit figure is RM2,100.8 million, up 5.0% year on year, on net income of RM5,158.4 million. The board raised the dividend 16% to 35.0 sen a share, a 55% payout.

Lending to low-income and affordable-housing customers sat at RM1,270.9 million, which is a balance-sheet product, not a grant. Sustainable financing mobilised in the year was RM18 billion, up 24%. The award, though, was given for corporate responsibility, so the comparison that matters is programme spend, not the loan book.

HOW THE 2026 CSR FILES COMPARE

Maybank’s empowerment spend is about 41 times AmBank’s CSR line, and it reached about 31 times as many people. AmBank still ran 36 more programmes, 167 against 131, which is a thicket of small local projects rather than a few regional flagships. CIMB’s own sustainability report put RM28.7 million in community investments for 2025, with more than 200,000 volunteer hours, and it did not come away with the Malaysia corporate-responsibility title either.

Five Pillars and the Programmes They Funded

The Community Empowerment Framework is the product AmBank could hand the jury. It groups giving under five headings: environment and endangered species, B40 economic participation, schools and universities, hunger and humanitarian aid, and people with disabilities and critical illness. The foundation-led community programmes across Malaysia sit on that map, paid through the AmGroup Foundation and staffed by Kelab AmBank Group volunteers.

Beneficiary numbers have climbed from 17,229 in FY2024 to 27,233 in FY2025 and 31,993 in FY2026, a 17% rise in the latest year. Staff logged 12,584 volunteer hours, with 3,635 employees taking part, 47% of the workforce. The group has set a cumulative target of 50,000 volunteer hours by FY2029, and AmCare gives staff three paid days a year for welfare and sustainability work.

WHERE THE FY2026 MONEY WENT

• Environment pillar: RM75,000 reached 1,022 people, including an e-waste drive that collected 896.8 kg from four office buildings.
• B40 pillar: RM352,319 reached 7,083 people, with festive Qurban meat for 800 households among the smaller lines.
• Hunger pillar: The Lost Food Project partnership, in its fifth year, rescued 71,776 kg of surplus food and supplied 205,070 meals, avoiding 179,450 kg of tCO2, with 428 staff across 40 sessions.
• Disability pillar: RM350,000 went to the Malaysian Association for the Blind’s Gurney Training Centre for vocational and life-skills training.
• Schools pillar: FINCO work put more than 12,100 students through financial literacy, English and pathway sessions, and MySkills took 30 at-risk youths.

Board members and senior staff were photographed at Sekolah Kebangsaan Kundasang in Sabah during a 50th-anniversary outreach in August 2025, the kind of school visit the framework is built to repeat.

Surplus Food and a Fifth Year With TLFP

The Lost Food Project is the cleanest specimen in the file because the outputs are physical. Surplus stock is sorted, meals are counted, and carbon from avoided waste is estimated. A fifth year of the same partner also gives the jury a trend, not a one-off cheque, which the criteria ask for when they want long-term strategies that have been executed.

Training Grants for Blind Students and Micro Firms

AmBank Islamic’s iTekad line allocated RM2.05 million through five partners, Ibupreneur, Teraju Ekonomi Asnaf, Pahang Skills, Right Track Education and Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, and reached 235 micro-entrepreneurs with working capital and training in digital marketing, money management and product work. A separate Qard microfinance pocket of RM0.50 million, run with TEKUN Nasional, reached 20 asnaf entrepreneurs.

Those two products sit next to the Gurney Training Centre grant, which is a classic disability-skills donation. Together they let the bank show B40 participation, Islamic social finance and disability support inside one country submission, without needing a regional foundation network.

CIMB and Maybank Put Up Bigger Community Cheques

CIMB’s RM28.7 million community figure is a regional number, and Maybank’s MYR73.81 million empowerment figure is a group number. Neither is a like-for-like Malaysia-only grant budget, and both still dwarf AmBank’s RM1.8 million CSR line. The country jury was not asked to pick the largest spender in ASEAN.

HSBC Bank Malaysia, for its part, collected Malaysia’s Best International Bank and Malaysia’s Best Bank for Customer Experience in the same Euromoney cycle. It did not take the corporate-responsibility country title either. The split is the design: Best Bank, ESG, diversity, large corporates, international bank and corporate responsibility can all go to different nameplates in one market.

Maybank still left Singapore with the world corporate-responsibility medal, Malaysia’s Best Bank, and the Malaysia ESG title. AmBank left with the one Malaysia trophy Maybank did not list. Both can now put a Euromoney line on a pitch deck. Only one of them can say it is the world’s best bank for corporate responsibility.

The Stamp Goes Straight Into the ESG File

AmBank already carries an MSCI AAA rating and a FTSE4Good score of 4.2, up from 3.7. The country CSR title is another external mark, cheaper than scaling grants toward Maybank’s empowerment budget, and easy to drop into the next sustainability report under Positive Societal Impact.

Shazman Shahid’s line in the 14 August statement is the one the group will keep using, because it treats the award as proof that giving is wired into operations rather than parked in a side budget.

This award reinforces that corporate responsibility is not an add-on at AmBank, it is embedded in how we operate and how we define progress.

Shazman Shahid, Head of Group Corporate Communications and Marketing, AmBank Group statement, 14 August 2026

The next test sits on the volunteer clock, not on another trophy. Staff are on the hook for a cumulative 50,000 hours by FY2029, with three AmCare days a year to help get there, while the foundation keeps running the same five pillars that won the country file.