The Boss Of The Largest Bank In Indonesia: The Cause Of The Poor Getting Poor Is Getting Sick

BRI President Director Sunarso (Photo: Capture BRI Youtube screen)

JAKARTA President Director of PT Bank Rakyat Indonesia Tbk (BRI) Sunarso highlighted the importance of a comprehensive health insurance scheme for the community.

According to him, this is important to provide protection, especially to the lower class, so that they can continue to carry out productive activities.

This concern is in line with BRI's business strategy, which mostly targets the small medium enter segment and also grassroots category customers.

Sunarso explained that the health sector is a serious threat to the lower class of society.

In analogy, he explained, a head of the family with a capital of IDR 500,000 bought fish at the auction site.

The fish are then resold by traveling around the area to earn IDR 1 million in one day.

"This person is actually quite vulnerable from the economic side. Why? Because if he is sick then he can't go buy fish, then sell fish and lose the margin that day. This is a real example that we took from the market in Makassar," he said when speaking at the BRI Microfinance Outlook 2023 forum, Thursday, January 26.

In addition, Sunarso continued, the person had to go to a doctor to have his health checked and had to pay for medical expenses.

"So it is clear that the cause of the poor getting poor is illness," he said.

To that end, Sunarso fully supports the government's efforts to provide a social safety net scheme that is in line with economic policies.

"So it is necessary to formulate policies aimed at tackling health problems that are in line with economic strengthening steps," he stressed.

For information, BRI is the largest bank in Indonesia based on the valuation of its assets.

The government-owned financial services institution managed to rank first thanks to the selection of the micromarket segment.

Until the third quarter of 2022, BRI was able to print a consolidated net profit of IDR 39.3 trillion or an increase of 106 percent compared to the same period in 2021 (year on year/yoy).

Meanwhile, the company's assets are known to grow 4 percent to IDR 1,684.6 trillion.

On the intermediary side, the issuer with the stock code BBRI successfully disbursed loans amounting to IDR 1,111.4 trillion or grew 7.9 percent.

In detail, BRI's MSME credit portfolio recorded an increase of 9.8 percent from Rp.852.1 trillion at the end of September 2021 to Rp. 935.8 trillion at the end of September 2022.

This makes the proportion of MSME loans compared to BRI's total credit continue to increase, to 84.2 percent.