Bank Mandiri turned a pandemic profit trough into a record Rp55.1T year on Livin's back

The pandemic hit Indonesia's big state banks harder than any downturn in a decade. In 2020 Bank Mandiri's net profit fell 37.7 percent to Rp17.1 trillion, its lowest since 2016, while BRI and BNI fell even harder; across the seven largest banks, aggregate profit dropped 39 percent as loan demand shrank and restructuring rules froze recognition of bad loans.

The squeeze deepened into 2021 — first-quarter profit fell another 25.3 percent to Rp5.92 trillion as loan-loss provisions jumped 55.4 percent — and Mandiri's answer was not balance-sheet retreat but a product bet. In October 2021 it relaunched Livin', a consumer super app meant to move everyday payments, savings and investments onto the bank's own rails.

The bet compounded fast. By 2023 Livin' had 37 million downloads and processed 2.8 billion transactions worth Rp3,271 trillion, up 32 percent in a year, while the wholesale counterpart Kopra carried a further Rp19.1 trillion of enterprise transactions. Asset quality improved alongside: gross NPLs, which the pandemic had pushed from 2.3 to 3.1 percent, fell to 1.02 percent by end-2023.

The result was the strongest year in the bank's history: a record Rp55.1 trillion net profit in 2023, up 33.7 percent, on total assets of Rp2,174.2 trillion that grew 9.1 percent during the year.

Net profit rebounded from Rp17.1T in 2020 to a record Rp55.1T in 2023; Livin' handled 2.8 billion transactions worth Rp3,271T and NPLs fell to 1.02 percent.

Indonesia's lockdowns made digital payments habitual rather than optional, so transaction volume migrated to whichever app made the habit frictionless.

Mandiri funded the pivot from pre-provision strength: even in the trough its operating income held, letting it spend through the downturn instead of retrenching.

Moving payments in-house built a fee and data engine that did not depend on the loan book, which is exactly where the pandemic was doing damage.

When crisis cuts the core business, recovery belongs to whoever scales the channel customers were forced into: lockdowns made digital payments habitual, and the bank with the habit owned the rebound.

The record 2023 run carried into a leadership handover — Darmawan Junaidi, who presented the results, took over as president director — and the bank kept pushing Livin' toward cross-border use under its Livin' Around The World feature. The episode became the reference point for Indonesia's state-bank recovery: BRI and BNI, which fell harder in 2020, spent the following years chasing the digital transaction economics Mandiri had already captured.