The economical crisis attacking Indonesia since
1998 has caused some national banks to be liquidated or merged. BII could
survive this crisis and did not need to be liquidated. In the past BII often
financed the corporate sector, where most of the corporations experienced major
problems and were unable to repay a huge amount of loans. This experience has
caused BII to change their marketing strategy by focusing more on retail and
customer products. Considerable amount of investment is required to support
this strategy as it must be backed up with continuously-changing banking technology