UOB banks on gender-specific credit cards
United Overseas Bank (Thai) expects gender-specific credit cards to play an increasingly significant role in expanding its cardholder base and driving spending growth over the next three years.
Yuttachai Teyarachakul, executive director and country head of Personal Financial Services, yesterday said segmentation marketing was a key strategy for the bank amid a highly competitive credit-card market.
Credit-card business is normally divided into the mass market and, for UOB (Thai), the "mass affluent" and affluent markets, but the bank has broken it down further with a segment of spending behaviour related to a cardholder’s gender.
The bank has in fact been in the gender-specific credit-card business for some time, having launched the UOB Lady Card 10 years ago and the UOB Black Card for males five years ago.Its gender-specific cards currently account for 45 per cent of the overall credit-card portfolio, followed by those for the mass market at 35 per cent, the mass affluent segment at 15 per cent, and affluent cardholders at 5 per cent.
Gender credit cardholders are a high purchasing-power segment willing to spend if they receive unique benefits, said Yuttachai.
Such cards have an average monthly spending of Bt6,000-Bt7,000, with 80 per cent of the cards being active, while UOB mass cardholders spend about Bt4,000 per month, with 60-70 per cent of the cards in active use.
The executive said the impressive performance of its gender-specific cards in the past few years had convinced the bank to revamp the design of the Black Card and increase the unique benefits it offers in a bid to capture more professional working men and drive spending.
It targets the revamp of the card will attract 50,000 new cardholders this year. UOB currently has about 600,000 customers across all types of credit card.
He expects the ratio of gender cards in the portfolio this year will increase to 50 per cent, rising to 60 per cent by 2015.
The proportion of UOB’s credit card for the mass segment is expected to fall to 30 per cent, with the bank estimating that some cardholders will migrate to gender-specific plastic.
The overall number of UOB credit cards in 2015 is expected to reach 800,000. More than 1 million cards are targeted by 2017.By pursuing segmentation marketing at a time of tough competition in the industry, UOB targets spending on its cards will grow by 20 per cent this year, outpacing the overall market, he said.
The bank’s outstanding credit-card lending portfolio this year is expected to rise to Bt10 billion, from Bt9 billion last year
