For banks, operational resilience has moved from the disaster-recovery binder to the front line of customer experience. A delayed payment or unavailable mobile app is no longer merely an IT incident; it is a trust event, particularly in Southeast Asia’s highly digital banking markets.
Maybank has entered a five-year strategic agreement with ServiceNow to scale its regional Resilience Operations Centre across Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. The programme is intended to give the bank one integrated view of applications, infrastructure, technology assets and service dependencies, enabling teams to identify and address potential service impacts before customers are affected.
The initiative supports Maybank’s ROAR30 strategy, under which the group has committed to invest RM10 billion over five years in technology, data and AI to modernise core systems, strengthen resilience and improve operational productivity.
At the centre of the programme is ServiceNow’s Super Intelligence Control Tower. It combines technology service management, operational monitoring, asset visibility, workflow automation and AI-driven operational intelligence, allowing Maybank to combine operational data, service context, AI and analytics across its regional footprint.
“As banking becomes more digital and interconnected across the region, our customers expect us to be available, secure and dependable at every moment,” said Giorgio Migliarina, group chief technology and digital officer at Maybank.
The rollout will begin in Malaysia and Singapore before extending to Indonesia over the five-year programme. The sequencing reflects the scale of the task: Maybank must align operational visibility across markets with different regulatory environments, technology estates and customer expectations.
The agreement arrives as regulators sharpen their focus on continuity of critical financial services. Bank Negara Malaysia has issued a discussion paper on strengthening operational resilience amid growing digitalisation, complex interdependencies and rising operational disruption. It has also identified cyber risk as the foremost concern for financial institutions in 2026, alongside IT disruption, human error and greater reliance on external service providers.
“Resilience is the foundation of customer trust for financial institutions,” said Melissa Ries, group vice president and managing director for Asia at ServiceNow.
Maybank is also investing in capability rather than technology alone. It will establish an internal Centre of Excellence, supported by ServiceNow University, to develop expertise in platform engineering, automation and AI.
The bank will additionally join ServiceNow’s invite-only NowNext AI programme, where specialist engineers will work with Maybank teams on advanced and agentic AI use cases for banking operations.
For Southeast Asian chief operating officers, the message is clear: resilience is becoming a continuous operating capability rather than a compliance exercise. The competitive advantage will belong to institutions that can connect signals across markets, automate routine responses and preserve human oversight where judgement, regulation and customer trust matter most.
