CIMB Thai to expand branches, customer relations
CIMB Thai Bank plans to double the number of retail customers and the amount of lending through bank branches by increasing mobile relationship managers (RMs) and adding about 20 branches annually.
The bank operates 159 domestic branches and will add 19 this year.
There are 600,000 individual customers using CIMB Thai’s branches, which means a branch covers at least 3,000 people, so the bank has room to increase its customer base through the planned branch expansion, said Thanachai Thanachaiary, senior executive vice president.
"We have five staff in each branch, which is enough to serve that many customers. However, the number of customers must be increased because the bank needs to raise funds to serve the loan requirements of SMEs. Therefore, we have to acquire new customers through branch expansion and mobile RMs," he said.
The bank started the mobile relationship system recently, and it has two RM groups. The first group seeks new depositors and refers them to bank branches. This group has 10 RMs and will add 10 more staff this year. They earn only a salary, unlike those in the second group, who operate in housing projects and deal with mortgages. They earn both a basic salary and incentives. The bank has 60 mobile RMs in housing projects.
"The mobile RM is a suitable model to acquire new customers while we have few branches and few staff at each branch. Once we have a greater number of customers, we might dissolve the mobile RMs," Thanachai said.
Most of the approximately 20 branches it will add annually will be located in line with the moves of SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) clients, and will be in office buildings rather than shopping malls to increase the number of products they handle.
"We found that branches in shopping malls are not supporting cross-selling because malls have tightened conditions for banks’ marketing. We want to increase the number of products per customer to 1.5 from 1.2, so CIMB Thai branches should be located outside shopping malls," he said.
CIMB Thai plans to double the number of customers to 1.2 million from 600,000 because it projects doubling the monthly amount of secured loans of retail and SME customers to Bt1.2 billion from between Bt500 million and Bt600 million currently.
The bank plans to capture "Generation Y" customers, and it wants to model its new branches to appeal to these younger people. It is conducting research on the branch model for Gen Y customers; branches catering to this segment should use electronic services because younger customers prefer doing their own online banking.
