Asian Finance Bank Bhd

Folks,

Last year, I met with the chief executive officer Asian Finance Bank Bhd, Datuk Mohamed Azhari Mohamed Kamil, pictured below. He is a Penang-born man, and was previously attached with Amanah Raya Bhd.

Datuk Mohamed Azahari Kamil

Asian Finance Bank or AFB is the smallest Middle Eastern bank in Malaysia. The other two Middle East banks are Al Rajhi Banking & Investment Corporation (Malaysia) Bhd and Kuwait Finance House Malaysia Bhd.

Despite being the smallest, AFB is doing well, posting decent profit for a bank of its size.

Can you believe that the bank actually has three ATM machines in the world?

Despite that, the bank is not focused on the retail sector, but rather on the corporate sector.

Please find the article below:

Source: The Edge Financial Daily, Monday, Jan 5, 2015

Kenanga's Fresh New Logo

Folks,

I just noticed that Kenanga -- one of the financial investment groups in Malaysia -- underwent a rebranding exercise, as evident in this week's issue of The Edge Weekly.

Looks like they have adorned a new logo. No more symmetric "K", but now a complete "Kenanga", particularly the stylish shape of the "g" and the futuristic "n" shape.

It looks funky and simple. Or as they say it: "A fresh new look." True.

Bear in mind that it is not easy to design a particular logo for an organization. In fact, most organizations these days do not use stylish images as they brand -- e.g. crescent etc.

Instead, they use their names to brand and market themselves.

But I wonder too why Kenanga do not place or embed (even tiny bit) element of "kenanga" flower in their logo.

By the way, Kenanga is a name of a flower.

Anyway.

Kenanga's choice of corporate colour to my mind, looks a bit dull. It is not exactly 'dull' as being bad, but it has this very 'corporate' and 'executive' edge to it.

And normally executive colours are usually dark e.g. black.

And the choice of red is somewhat vaguely similar -- and I am speaking from a layman's view -- to that of CIMB Bank.

Kenanga' choice of the new cotporate colour is not red-blood, but more of a satin-heart.

But I'm sure the branding folks at Kenangan have their own rationale for choosing such colour.

My view is simple -- use bright colours to stand out among the rest e.g. yellow (Maybank) and blue (RHB Bank).

But to stay humble and low-profile, a "dull" and "dark" colours could be use.

After all, there is no right or wrong in determining the corporate colour for your organization.

It depends on your (or the shareholder's) choice and taste.

But anyway, congratulations Kenanga on your new rebranding exercise.

I guess I will miss the old symmetric "K" :)