Ask Suhail to define innovation and this will be his response -- “innovation is not a spark but a continuous fire”. A simple observation on the surface perhaps, but such philosophy has formed the foundation for a period of heightened digital and product innovation at Maybank in Malaysia.

Supported by an army of 1500 employees within the bank’s group technology division, Suhail has spearheaded efforts to revolutionise all aspects of financial services during a 5-year IT strategy shaped by ‘People, Passion and Persistence’.

One such example is Sama-Sama Lokal -- a zero-fee platform built to connect local small businesses with Maybank’s enormous customer base -- designed to help owners overcome digital challenges and e-delivery service fees. Suhail led the delivery of a minimum viable product to the market in 8 weeks, with 10,000 local businesses now on-boarded.

From an internal perspective, Suhail’s innovation and leadership also extended to MBBLabs -- Maybank’s Innovation Labs -- launched as a research and development centre to discover, drive and deliver new value propositions in the areas of analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The brain-child of Suhail, MBBLabs houses a talented pool of more than 200 resources including data scientists, experienced bankers, business process professionals and computing engineers -- acting as the main change agent to drive a Digital first framework and Agile work culture.