Sixty-seven years ago - on April 4, 1941 to be precise -- Bank NISP was established in Bandung, West Java, under the name NV Nederlandsch Indische Spaar En Deposito Bank.
Bank NISP is the fourth oldest bank in Indonesia and initially operated as a savings bank. In 1967 the bank's status was changed to that of a commercial bank.
In 1972, Bank NISP entered into a financing and technical assistance agreement with Daiwa Bank of Japan through Bank Daiwa Perdania, which was the first joint venture bank in Indonesia. On 27 June 1974, Bank NISP became a shareholder in Bank Perdania, in which as of 31 March 2002 Bank NISP has 19.92% share. In March 2003, the Daiwa Bank, Limited, and the Asahi Bank, Limited, merged, and reorganized into Resona Bank, Limited, and Saitama Resona Bank, Limited, to establish "The Resona Holdings, Inc." In connection with the merger, the bank's name has been changed from PT Bank Daiwa Perdania to PT Bank Resona Perdania. However, the Extraordinary General Shareholders Meeting in 2005 has decided to sell Bank NISP's entire shareholding in PT Bank Resona. The sale of the 19.92% shareholding ( 567,777 shares ) was intended to maximize Bank NISP's earning assets structure by shifting the investment to the real sector.
Bank NISP's status was upgraded in 1990 when the bank became a foreign exchange bank. In line with this, confidence in Bank NISP from several international institutions continued to grow. EXIM Bank of Japan and Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO) both used Bank NISP to channel their longterm soft loans to small- and medium-sized enterprises. In addition, Bank NISP also participated in USAID's loan guarantee portfolio program from the United States.
Bank NISP became a public bank on October 20, 1994, listing its shares on the Jakarta Stock Exchange. In 1995 and 1996, Bank NISP was awarded ISO 9002 certification for its Treasury and Financial Institutions division as well as its Head Office division. Bank NISP was the first bank in the Asean region to apply international quality standards. In January 2000, Bank NISP's ISO 9002 certification was upgraded to ISO 9001-1994 and there was a further upgrade to ISO 9001-2000 certification in 2001.
At the beginning of 1997, together with Singapore's third largest banks the Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), Bank NISP established a joint venture bank called Bank OCBC-NISP. Following the acquisition of PT Bank Keppel TatLee Buana by PT Bank OCBC-NISP in February 2002, the name of PT Bank OCBC-NISP was changed to PT Bank OCBC Indonesia. In 2002, Bank NISP divested its share in the bank from 15% to 1.33%.
In the same year, Bank NISP became the first bank in Indonesia to receive longterm bilateral loans directly from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group. Then at the beginning of 2001, the IFC became a shareholder in Bank NISP, taking a 9.6% share through Rights Issue II and changing the loans that it had already provided into subordinated loans amounting to USD 5 million.
Following this, a second investment was made through rights issue III, totaling Rp 31.56 billion and USD 5 million through the execution of the compensation for the above loans, which was carried out in July 2002. By 2005 Bank NISP held its 4th rights issue which raised a total of Rp 601.5 billion. As of 30 September 2005, the IFC officially owns a 7.17% stake in Bank NISP.
The economic crisis that struck Indonesia in mid-1997 and rapidly deteriorated into a banking crisis forced the government to introduce a recapitalization program to rescue Indonesia's banking sector. Under this program, Bank Indonesia classified Bank NISP as an 'A' bank, indicating that the bank's capital structure was strong enough to exclude it from the bank recapitalization program, which was essentially aimed at strengthening capital.
In 1999, while the majority of Indonesian banks were involved in internal recovery activities, Bank NISP went ahead and launched a repackaged Home Ownership Loan product called 'KPR Merdeka' (Independence Home Ownership Loans). The unique feature of this product is the loan approval process, which takes only five working days as from when all data have been received. This product received a very warm welcome from members of the public who had anxiously been awaiting bank loans to help them pay for their homes in the midst of the economic crisis.
With the support of more than 5,300 employees, over 352 offices and 20,000 ATMs (including the "ATM Bersama" and ATM BCA network ) spread throughout Indonesia and also OCBC Bank's ATMs in Singapore, and BankCard in Malaysia Bank NISP continues to grow and develop without forgetting the importance of providing quality service to its customers.
In the international domain, trust to Bank NISP has become more concrete, OCBC Bank Singapore, one of the biggest banks in the Southeast Asia, came in as a shareholder of NISP since April 2004. With the 72.40% share ownership by the end of 2007, OCBC Bank is the biggest institutional shareholder of Bank NISP, which actively supports Bank NISP’s growth and development to be the world-class standard bank.