Goh Peng Ooi.
Silverlake Axis
This story is part of Forbes’ coverage of Malaysia’s Richest 2023. See the full list here.
Malaysian fintech mogul Goh Peng Ooi’s Silverlake Axis, which provides financial software and digital services to banks, is betting on Thailand for faster growth. Since last year, the Singapore-listed company has struck deals with Siam Commercial Bank, one of the largest lenders in the country, and state-owned Export-Import Bank of Thailand (EXIM Thailand).
Thailand is Silverlake’s third-largest market, accounting for 12% of its revenue for the financial year ended June 2022. Malaysia and Indonesia accounted for 33% and 17%, respectively. While overall revenue grew 18% to 736.5 million ringgit ($165 million) over that period, revenue from Thailand surged 88%.
In December, Silverlake tied up with Siam Commercial Bank to help it add more microlending customers by tapping the unbanked—Thailand has a large population base that is relatively underserved. The bank’s microlending arm, AutoX, now offers its loan products and services via Silverlake’s cloud-based platform Mobius, which provides a quicker response at a lower cost. In February, Silverlake signed an agreement to revamp EXIM Thailand’s core systems to help it transition to digital banking.
Silverlake also hired more people in Vietnam, Cambodia and Philippines last year, and recently set up a Dubai office to spearhead its entry into the Middle East and African markets. At home in Malaysia, as one of the local partners of Amazon Web Services, Silverlake stands to benefit from the U.S. e-commerce giant’s plan to invest $6 billion by 2037 to build a regional infrastructure of servers and data centers.
Goh, who began his career at IBM and started Silverlake in 1989, saw his net worth rise 8% to $500 million in the past year. The company says it supplies to over 70 countries and counts eight of the top 20 largest Southeast Asian banks as its customers.
