JAKARTA. Jahja Setiaatmadja, CEO of Bank BCA secures the title the Best CEO In The Most Valuable Company following his success in leading the company to perform well, both financially and in the stock market in Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX). The award is given by Tempo.co and IDNFinancials.com last Friday (1/12) at Sofitel Nusa Dua Beach Resort, Bali.

Setiaadmadja is awarded the title as he managed to generate well-sustained financial growth within the past 5 years. Even amidst the COVID-19 crisis, BCA were only slightly affected before recovering quickly.

As the most valuable company, Bank BCA continues to demonstrate positive shift in its performance. During the pandemic, for example, BCA still maintained its net income at IDR 27.1 trillion in 2020, only slipped ever so slightly from IDR 28.6 trillion in 2019. BCA only struggled for a few months, from Match to August 2020. This bank also recovered quickly, scoring net profit surge to IDR 31.4 trillion in 2021 and IDR 40.7 trillion in 2022. 

Furthermore, looking at its cost-to-income ratio, BCA showed improvement, from 41.3% in 2019 to 33.9% in 2022. Return on Equity (ROE) also increased from 18% in 2019 to 21.7% in 2022.

In terms of its performance at IDX, Bank BCA is one of the most valuable stocks in banking industry due to its ever-increasing stock price. The price continues to rise even after the management agreed upon a stock split with 1:5 ratio, bringing the number of shares to 123,275,050,000 from 24,655,010,000. As the number of shares proliferated, the stock split induces higher liquidity, and the price soared due to its affordability post stock split. Therefore, BCA managed to arrive at the top of the market capitalisation list out of over 900 publicly listed companies, scoring over IDR 1 quadrillion. 

Setiaadmadja successfully put BCA at the most valuable company level, thanks to the strategy prepared by the team through several breakthroughs, including Zoom for virtual meeting and digital expo. These breakthroughs were carried out right in the middle of the pandemic due to drastic decrease of revenue, particularly in housing ownership and vehicle ownership credits. Setiaadmadja, in an exclusive interview with IDNFinancials a couple of weeks ago, revealed the struggle BCA faced in the beginning of the pandemic, making housing ownership credits, which used to reach IDR 2 trillion per month, were only IDR 800 billion. Vehicle ownership credits also took a massive downturn from IDR 1.6 trillion to IDR 80 billion.

BCA then decided to make a breakthrough by creating a virtual exhibition space through a website, allowing potential buyers to feel as if they enter the real expo. They took photos of houses, enabling a 360-degrees view. For cars, they prepared a mock-up version. BCA also joined hands with developers and car dealers to promote this virtual expo. With this digital breakthrough, housing and vehicle ownership credits slowly picked up, scoring IDR 1 trillion per month for car ownership credits in 2020, way higher than IDR 80 billion seen at the early days of pandemic.

"Educating users to utilise digital technology is vital. However, we still deployed teams from branch offices to communicate directly with users. The visualisation was virtual, but it was not only about digital," added Setiaadmadja. He put employees in his branch offices to work, amounting to 1,251 offices containing 4,200 Halo BCA (call centre) workers. With said virtual expo, acceleration increased, while cost became more efficient, because one event could cover the whole region of Indonesia. At the end of fiscal year 2021 and 2022, conditions started to improve, allowing financing to recover. Prior to pandemic, housing ownership credit transaction was only IDR 2 trillion, but it grew to IDR 3 trillion in 2021. So was vehicle ownership credits; after declining from IDR 1.8 trillion to IDR 80 billion per month, it soared to IDR 2.4 trillion once the pandemic subsided.

Another strategy that places BCA as the most valuable company is its digital payment implementation that had been carried out, even before pandemic. The pandemic has forced people to adapt quickly to digital payment, which acts as a new fee-based income generator for BCA as e-commerce got more popular and is equipped with various virtual payment, which generated virtual account fee and top up fee for e-wallets.

Digital payment induces lower cost of fund and makes CASA even cheaper. “All those strategies allow our profitability to increase,” Setiaadmadja stated. On the other hand, BCA is still responsible to maintain its credit quality through a well-sustained NPL ratio.

With digital payment, the frequency of transaction also continued to soar. Compared to 10 million transactions pre-COVID-19, it now has reached 140 million transactions, scoring 14 times higher. The number of transactions from 1,251 branch offices is now recorded at 110-140 million transactions, 99.6% of which is carried out outside the bank counter. Only 0.4% of those transactions are carried out on the counter, although in terms of the value, the transactions within branch offices are still considered huge due to high number of cash deposit, withdrawal, current account, clearing account, which involved billions, must be carried out within the branch offices.

Under Setiaadmadja’s command, some of those strategies managed to bring BCA as the Most Valuable Company, thanks to its high-performing stock that mirrors its current financial performance. Bank BCA managed to score market capitalisation of over IDR 1 quadrillion. Those are some reasons behind Jahja Setiaadmadja’s title as the Best CEO in the Most Valuable Company.

This appreciation is carried out following meticulous data collection and research, including data in the financial and sustainability report, as well as virtual and face-to-face meeting with nominated CEOs.

This award also includes a talk show titled Towards Indonesia Emas 2045, featuring 4 CEOs of renowned companies, as speakers. They are Irfan Setiaputra, CEO of PT Garuda Indonesia Tbk; David Hidayat, CEO of PT Industri Jamu dan Farmasi Sido Muncul Tbk; Christian Kartawijaya, CEO of PT Indocement Tunggal Prakarsa Tbk; and Nicolas D. Kanter, CEO of PT Aneka Tambang Tbk. (AM/ZH)