Felia Salim

Vice Chair of the GAIN Board of Directors


Ms Salim has spent more than 30 years in finance and banking.

From 2004-2015, Ms Salim served PT Bank Negara Indonesia, one of Indonesia’s largest state banks. As Vice President Director/Transformation Director, she was responsible for the comprehensive transformation of the bank. The five-year implementation of the Customer Centric Business Operating Model encompassed shifting away from a product centricity. This transformation effort has improved and diversified its revenue stream by focusing not only on credit but its fee based business through trade and transactional services. The robust risk management and credit model have improved the asset quality and have been able to increase its security coverage significantly. Productivity, cost efficiency and up-scaling across the board had been part of the design implementation. This meant having to align people, process and technology. One of the key levers of this comprehensive exercise is the fundamental mindset/cultural change of the banks’ employees. Both hard and soft skills learning included leadership training at both senior and middle management level. (Publicly available quick facts: BNI’s share price before the transformation was at Rp400/share; at the closing of the program the share price reached Rp7000/share with the bottom line reaching double digit for the first time. All other indicators performing above market average).

At the height of the Asian Crisis in the late nineties, she held two important positions: as the Deputy Chairperson of The Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency, right after serving as the Head of the Secretariat for the Financial Sector Policy Committee.

She has also been instrumental in developing several key organizations, such as the Partnership for Governance Reform of Indonesia supported by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) -World Bank- Asian Development Bank (ADB), The Transparency International Indonesia Chapter and the Tifa Foundation associated with the Open Society Foundation. She is also currently a member of the Governance Committee of ISEI Jakarta, the Indonesian Economists Association, Jakarta Chapter, and as expert council (dewan pakar) for Barra Risk Management.

Her philantrophy and commitment to sustainability has earned her seats in both national and international Advisory and Governing Boards of the Blue Abadi Fund for marine conservation work in Papua’s Bird’s Head Seascape; the AndGreen Fund, a Dutch-based Production Protection Inclusion fund to focus work in Indonesia, Liberia and Brazil; US based Climate and Land Use Alliance doing work in Asia and Latin America and Ecoregions International, a regional integrated sustainable business development initiative, which include the health sector, in East Lombok and West Sumbawa.