Public Bank Brand Guidelines: A 1966 Kuala Lumpur Bank “for the People” Turns 60

One branch and a “bank for the people.”

Public Bank opened for business on 6 August 1966 at its first branch on Jalan Gereja in Kuala Lumpur, the bank says. Its founder was Teh Hong Piow, who, according to English Wikipedia, was at the time general manager of Malayan Banking, the bank now known as Maybank. Public Bank describes its founding idea as a “bank for the people,” bringing banking services to ordinary Malaysians, and it still uses the line “We Are The Bank For The People” on its corporate website in its sixtieth year.

A stock-market listing followed within a year. Public Bank says its shares were listed on what is now Bursa Malaysia on 6 April 1967, and its milestone timeline records an official opening two days earlier, on 4 April 1967, by Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s first prime minister. English Wikipedia also gives 1967 as the year of the listing.

The bank’s own timeline then lists a first dividend in 1970, a redesign of the Public Bank logo, which the timeline places in 1971, and a move into Bangunan Public Bank, which the bank describes as the first head-office building it owned.

Through the 1980s the record is one of steady additions. Public Bank says it introduced its first automated teller machine to savings-account holders at its Kuala Lumpur main office on 18 January 1984, and entered stockbroking on 1 October 1987 by completing the purchase of GP Securities, which became PB Securities. In 1990 it bought JCG Finance Company in Hong Kong, renamed Public Finance Limited.

From one city to five countries.

The early 1990s took Public Bank beyond Malaysia. The bank says it established Cambodian Public Bank on 25 May 1992, now a wholly owned subsidiary, and opened branches in Vientiane, Laos, and Colombo, Sri Lanka. Much later its Laos business was converted into a wholly owned subsidiary, Public Bank Lao Limited, and Public Bank Vietnam Limited received its licence in 2016, according to the same timeline. Public Bank (Hong Kong) is listed among its subsidiaries on the group website.

Islamic banking arrived in 1993, when the bank launched an interest-free banking scheme, “Skim Perbankan Tanpa Faedah,” and set up an Islamic Banking Unit. On 1 November 2008 that business was transferred to a wholly owned subsidiary, Public Islamic Bank, which opened its first full-fledged Islamic branch, offering Shariah-compliant products, in 2010. In April 2011 Public Bank and Public Islamic Bank launched a takaful joint venture with ING, ING Public Takaful Ehsan.

Acquisitions widened the group at home. Public Bank says it bought Sime Merchant Bank on 25 October 2000, renaming it Public Merchant Bank and moving into merchant banking; completed the purchase of Hock Hua Bank on 31 March 2001; and on 4 September 2004 merged the finance-company business of Public Finance Berhad into the commercial bank. Its head office moved to Menara Public Bank in central Kuala Lumpur, later joined by Menara Public Bank 2, a forty-storey tower on Jalan Raja Chulan.

Reporting has been part of how the bank presents itself. Public Bank says it was the first recipient of the National Annual Corporate Report Awards, on 28 January 1991, for its 1989 annual report. Today its corporate website groups annual reports, sustainability disclosures and a sustainable-financing hub alongside its investor pages.

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.

Insurance, QR codes and a sixtieth birthday.

A recent change came in insurance. On 10 October 2024 Forbes reported that Public Bank had agreed to buy a 44.15% stake in LPI Capital, a general insurer, from the family of its founder, as part of a goal of offering a fuller range of financial services. By July 2026 The Star was describing LPI Capital as a Public Bank subsidiary, reporting that LPI had sold its own holding of Public Bank shares on 21 May 2026 because a subsidiary may not hold shares in the bank. Forbes called Public Bank Malaysia’s second-largest lender by market value in 2024; the bank itself says it was the third-largest bank in Malaysia by total assets at the end of 2025, with 314 branches at home and 157 abroad.

The group now spans Public Islamic Bank, Public Investment Bank, the unit-trust manager Public Mutual, PB Trustee Services and its overseas banks. On the payments side, Public Bank says it was the first bank to adopt DuitNow QR, Malaysia’s national QR standard launched by PayNet on 17 July 2019, and that on 8 November 2018 it launched all-in-one digital payment terminals with Revenue Group. Its customer apps include MyPB, and its 54th annual general meeting, on 29 June 2020, was its first held virtually, broadcast from Menara Public Bank.

The bank says it marked the date on 6 August 2026 with a light show of 3,000 drones and fireworks around Menara Public Bank, under the campaign line “Your Journey, Our Dedication,” while its corporate pages use “Your Journey, Our Commitment” and an older philosophy, “Public Bank Cares… With Integrity.” A separate sixtieth-anniversary logo appears on its celebration page.

For a design guide, Public Bank shows how a retail bank can carry one founding phrase, “a bank for the people,” across six decades of branches, apps and annual reports. Compare Maybank, where its founder once worked, and RHB Bank, another Kuala Lumpur bank built by mergers. For this guide we use a deep red, a warm ivory, charcoal and a muted gold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Public Bank’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.