68 years ago, to be exact, on 15 June 1955, an organisation was established and given the name North Borneo Credit Corporation (NBCC). It operated based on the Credit Ordinance 1955. The name North Borneo Credit Corporation was then changed to Sabah Credit Corporation (SCC) and in the year 1981, the Credit Ordinance 1955 was replaced with Enactment No. 22, 1981, of which SCC operates on until today. SCC is mandated to promote the economic development of Sabah and with that object to provide or facilitate the grant of financial credits where necessary and desirable and to stimulate and facilitate private investment in Sabah by local and external capital. With the grant of NBD1 million, NBCC started its operation and provided financing for farmers to buy buffaloes and tractors to plough their fields, boats for the fishermen, rice mills and pick up for the services and logistic providers, and later financing for plantations, animal husbandries, township development, houses, factories, shops, professionals, businesses and many more. Back then, NBCC then SCC relied solely on the State Government injection of funds in the form of soft loans to continue carrying out its mandated roles. Indeed, it was challenging, especially when the injection of funds stopped and what more when SCC core business was taken away. However, SCC persevered. With the help of SCC’s banker friends, SCC started venturing into the capital market to source for it funding needs.

We started with asset securitisation with Cagamas and followed by term loans from the banks. In the year 2011, SCC had its first bond program worth RM500 million. Subsequently, it was followed by several sukuk programmes, with a total worth of RM6.25 billion. With all these, SCC has evolved with time and needs to become a different entity to remain relevant, resilient and sustainable that enabled SCC to continue with its mandated role and to assist the beloved state of Sabah in anyway it can. Our varieties of products and services have significantly grown. Although we are relatively still a small organisation, we have grown leaps and bounds in our own way, now with assets worth RM3.07 billion and profits before tax averaging more than RM100 million annually.

Since the year 2005, we have, without failed, paid dividend to the State Government of Sabah and to date the total amount is about RM368 million. Aside from that, since 2016, we have also contributed to Zakat, amounting to a total of RM1.2 million and interest payment to the State Government amounting to RM140 million. SCC has also contributed to income tax which by today may be well above RM500 million. For the community at large, those who are not able to receive financial credits facilities, SCC has since the year 2005, introduced its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme that given priority to children, women and physically challenged people. SCC allocates RM5 million annually to the CSR programme. As of today, SCC has contributed more than 65 units of rural hostels, more than 57 units of open halls, classrooms, resources centres, table and chairs for many schools in all over Sabah. SCC has also sponsored resources centres for the single mothers and those physically challenged people as well as other medical related facilities, such as breast cancer scanning. SCC has also contributed various medical equipment to the government hospitals, in and around Sabah. In general, SCC has spent more than RM70 million for 543 CSR projects since year 2005.

We venture into human capital capacity development by exposing our staffs to world class events and trainings, conferences as well as study visits and took great care of their welfare. We embark on improving our internal control and supervision, reviewing our obsolete processes and procedures and enhancing our governance and integrity. We set up our Compliance and Integrity Unit that look into areas such as Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) as well as integrity. Soon we will have a Certified Integrity Officer. We invested heavily on technology to create a platform for better and efficient services. We deployed the current state of the art technology in our financing system as well as in our accounting system. We ensure our system, network and data security by regularly update and upgrade our security system, setting up our disaster recovery centre for business continuity and using cloud for easier access and cost management and embarked on data analytical and developed our dashboards, develop apps and so on.