The banking group is also optimistic that its plan to buy small Indonesian lender PT Bank Mestika Dharma, first proposed in 2009, will go through this year.
"We hope to be able to get both these things done by this year. (On RHB-OSK), I don't want to speculate (when we'll get Bank Negara Malaysia's approval), but we are expecting by April to get the deal through," said Renzo Viegas, deputy managing of RHBCap's banking unit, RHB Bank Bhd.
RHBCap and OSK on January 11 applied for Bank Negara's approval for their merger.
For the merger to go through, RHBCap must also get the go-ahead from regulators in each market OSK Investment Bank operates in.
The latter has businesses in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Cambodia and Hong Kong, giving RHBCap a wider regional presence if the merger pans out.
"Every single regulator of where OSK operates has to approve," Viegas told Business Times on the sidelines of an RHB Bank event here yesterday.
As for Bank Mestika, he said Indonesia's central bank had asked the RHB group to re-submit its proposal "a couple of months" ago.
"... So it (prospects) looks better than what it was some time ago," he remarked.
Malaysian banks last year were nervous about buying into Indonesian banks when news emerged in July that Bank Indonesia - the central bank - was considering limiting foreign shareholding in banks to less than 50 per cent.
Bank Indonesia has yet to announce any such changes, and some analysts say this may mean that the plan may have been shelved for now.
RHBCap first announced it wanted to buy 80 per cent of small Medan-based Bank Mestika for some RM1.16 billion in October 2009. In December 2010, it made changes to the deal structure, with RHB Bank being proposed as the entity to undertake the purchase.
Meanwhile, Viegas said yesterday that RHB Bank hopes to double its Internet and mobile banking customer base to about one million by year-end from just over half a million now.
It has the fourth most-visited website among banks in Malaysia after Maybank, CIMB and Public Bank, according to Alexa Ranking, which ranks website traffic.
With that in mind, RHB Bank launched a campaign with Naza Group's Next Bike Sdn Bhd, the sole importer and distributor of the Ducati brand in Malaysia, where customers that perform any financial transaction via the Internet and mobile banking platforms, stand a chance to win an Italian Ducati Monster 795 bike, cash and Ducati merchandise.
