RHB Bank Brand Guidelines: Rashid Hussain’s Initials, a 1997 Merger and 1913 Roots

A stockbroker’s group and a 1913 bank.

RHB Bank took its present form in 1997, when Kwong Yik Bank merged with DCB Bank, the Development & Commercial Bank, a deal English Wikipedia describes as the country’s biggest banking merger up to that time. The three letters stand for Rashid Hussain Berhad, the group built by Rashid Hussain, whom English Wikipedia names as the founder of the RHB Group.

Rashid Hussain came to banking through broking. English Wikipedia says he began his financial career in 1971 with Strauss Turnbull in Britain, returned to Malaysia in 1975 to work at Bumiputra Merchant Bankers, and left in 1983 to start Rashid Hussain Securities. In less than a decade, the same article says, he assembled a stockbroking firm, a commercial bank, a finance company and a merchant bank. In the mid-1990s his group began RHB Vision City in Kuala Lumpur as a joint venture with the Korean company Daewoo; the project stalled during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, was bought by Quill Retail Malls in 2007 and was completed as Quill City.

The bank’s older root is Kwong Yik Bank, which English Wikipedia says was established in Kuala Lumpur in 1913, with Chan Wing, Cheong Yoke Choy and Loke Yew among its co-founders, citing Neil Khor’s 2019 biography of Loke Yew. Wikipedia’s article on an older, separate Singapore bank of the same name, which closed in November 1913, describes the Selangor bank as founded by Cantonese businessmen a few months before that closure; the two were distinct. The sources used for this guide do not say how Kwong Yik Bank operated during the occupation of 1941–1945. In 2013 the RHB Banking Group marked a hundred years of RHB Bank, counting from that 1913 start.

Four banks under one set of initials.

The 1997 merger was the first of three. English Wikipedia describes RHB Bank as the result of mergers with Kwong Yik Bank in 1997, Sime Bank in 1999 and Bank Utama in 2003, each bringing its own history into the group.

Sime Bank began as the United Malayan Banking Corporation, or UMBC, which was set up in 1959 and declared open in 1960; English Wikipedia calls it the first commercial bank established in independent Malaya. In 1996 UMBC became part of Sime Darby and was renamed Sime Bank, and in 1999 it merged with RHB Bank. Bank Utama was incorporated in 1976, merged its operations with Kewangan Utama in 1998, and joined RHB Bank in 2003.

The group then moved further into investment banking. In 2012 RHB Capital bought all of OSK Investment Bank through a share swap, with OSK receiving 10.27% of the RHB group in return, English Wikipedia says, citing The Edge. In 2016 RHB Bank took over the listing status of RHB Capital and became the group’s financial holding company.

Not every proposed deal went ahead. In 2017 RHB Bank and AmBank received Bank Negara Malaysia’s approval to begin merger talks, the New Straits Times reported on 1 June 2017, according to English Wikipedia; in August 2017 The Star reported that the talks had ended without agreement on terms, the article adds.

Islamic banking sits in its own subsidiary, RHB Islamic Bank, which English Wikipedia says offers Shariah-compliant products through branches and machines across Malaysia. In November 2026 the bank introduced the RHB Sinar Credit Card-i, a Shariah-compliant card, with applications taken at RHB branches nationwide, Fintech News Malaysia reported on 6 November 2026.

How Malaysian and Vietnamese banks present themselves.

Banks in Malaysia and Vietnam tend to present themselves through a bold wordmark or a short set of initials, often set in a single strong colour. Red, green, blue and orange recur across the sector, and many names work in two languages at once: a Malay or Vietnamese name for home customers and an English form or abbreviation for markets, filings and overseas branches. Several of the banks in this guide are known chiefly by initials that began as the names of older holding companies or merged institutions.

In Malaysia, Islamic banking usually sits beside the conventional bank as a range of its own, often run through a separate subsidiary with Shariah-compliant deposits, financing and cards. Public Bank, for example, says it began Islamic banking in 1993 and moved that business into Public Islamic Bank in 2008, while RHB offers its Islamic products through RHB Islamic Bank. RHB’s Sinar Credit Card-i, launched in November 2026, shows the “-i” suffix some Malaysian banks use for Islamic products.

Bank websites in both countries are organised around everyday tasks: deposits and savings accounts, home and vehicle loans, cards, QR payments and mobile apps. In Malaysia the national QR standard, DuitNow QR, was launched by PayNet in July 2019, according to Public Bank, whose own site lists DuitNow QR and its MyPB app under mobile banking. Photography tends to show branches, city skylines, head-office towers and customers at counters or on phones rather than abstract imagery.

Much of how these banks describe themselves appears in formal documents. Listed banks publish annual reports and, increasingly, sustainability reports, and their corporate websites group these with investor pages, milestone timelines and anniversary campaigns. This guide draws on those pages, on encyclopedia entries and on dated press reports, and marks where a fact rests on a bank’s own word.

A regional group and a pending insurance deal.

RHB Bank is based in Kuala Lumpur and listed on Bursa Malaysia. English Wikipedia lists the Employees Provident Fund, Malaysia’s national retirement-savings fund, as its parent, and gives the group’s area of operation as Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia and Thailand. Its retail range covers deposits, loans, cards and Islamic banking, alongside the investment-banking arm that grew from the OSK deal.

Its newest corporate move is still open. On 11 May 2026 Bank Negara Malaysia approved talks between RHB Bank and Tokio Marine Asia over the proposed sale of up to all of RHB Insurance and its combination with Tokio Marine Insurans (Malaysia), with RHB keeping up to 35% of the enlarged insurer, The Star reported on 22 October 2026. The same report said the central bank, in a letter dated 21 October, had extended the deadline for negotiations to 11 February 2027. The deal was announced as talks in May 2026 and had not been completed at the time of writing.

The name carries two dates at once. The three capital letters come from Rashid Hussain Berhad, the holding company behind the 1997 merger, while the centenary the group marked in 2013 counts from Kwong Yik Bank’s start in Kuala Lumpur in 1913. Between those points sit the UMBC and Sime Bank line, which English Wikipedia traces to 1959, and Bank Utama, incorporated in 1976, all now trading under the same initials.

For a design guide, RHB Bank shows how a set of founder’s initials can become the stable name for a group built from several older banks. Compare AmBank, its partner in the 2017 merger talks, and CIMB, another Kuala Lumpur group known by its initials. For this guide we use a mid blue, a deep navy, a light cyan and a pale mist with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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