KBank to focus on small, micro business
Kasikornbank, the largest lender to small and medium-sized enterprises, plans to focus next year on flood-ravaged small and micro businesses.
“We know that SMEs that were directly or indirectly affected want to recover quickly, so the bank will stress faster approvals to help liquidity and expand our business centres to 200 in 2012 from 187 to impart knowledge to SMEs,” Pakorn Patanapat, executive vice president of KBank, said yesterday.
“We will also increase business opportunities for SMEs through seminars,” he said.
Interest rates will be lower, which will encourage SMEs to access financial assistance more.
About 40 per cent of the Kingdom’s 3 million SMEs are borrowers. KBank has 600,000 SME customers, but only 180,000 of them have taken out credit.
The remaining 420,000 clients hesitate to ask for loans. Most are small and micro enterprises. The bank will try to persuade them to use loans and other services to boost both loan and fee income, Pakorn said.
Loans to small and micro operators are projected to grow by 15 per cent and to medium-sized enterprises by 9 per cent next year, so the shares in the SME loan portfolio of medium-sized and small/micro enterprises will change slightly to 59:41 from 60:40.
KBank plans to boost fee income in 2012 by 22 per cent to Bt8.62 billion.
The share of fees in 2012 income is expected to increase to 28 per cent from 26 per cent.
Heavy investment by the public and private sectors to rehabilitate the country will support the recovery of SMEs.
Assuming growth in gross domestic product of 4.3 per cent next year, the bank is confident its loans will increase by 12 per cent, higher than the 9-per-cent increase this year.
KBank’s outstanding loans next year are expected to climb to Bt428.70 billion.
After the flood crisis, SME traders will have larger volumes to accelerate their exports next year.
Starting in the second quarter, SMEs will require more imports of machinery and raw materials to increase exports.
Trade finance will be one key driver of loan growth next year. The bank expects the trade volume of its SME customers to increase to Bt494 billion from Bt386 billion this year, Pakorn said.
