KTC boosted by focus on attracting more active spenders

KTC sales staff had until recently concentrated attention on attracting new business, but around half of new customers neither activate their newly issued credit cards nor withdraw cash in the form of a personal loan after being granted approval, Nutchanun Kengluecha, executive vice president for distribution business, said yesterday.
With the revenue of credit-card and personal-loan providers coming from interest income, KTC has therefore had to encourage its sales network to focus on finding active customers rather than simply getting customer numbers up, she said.
The new strategy is working, as the level of active spending via credit cards and cash withdrawals via personal-loan products has definitely improved, she said.
New KTC accounts both for credit cards and personal loans this year will not be much greater than before the strategy shift, with the company targeting 100,000 new customers by year-end.
Each salesperson still gets commission based on the number of approvals, but they now also receive a special incentive if a referred customer activates a newly issued card and/or withdraw money using a personal-loan facility, she said.
“All sales staff must know their customer portfolio well to acquire customers with good [spending] potential, and not attract risky ones.”
KTC offers different incentives to each sales channel, on top of basic commission, when they refer new customers to the company, Nutchanun said.
Direct salespeople prefer special money incentives because they have no fixed salary, unlike officers at parent company Krung Thai Bank, who prefer to receive promotions such as tour packages.
The company has a strong sales network of more than 20,000 people, of whom 13,000 are direct sales staff of KTC, said the executive.
Krung Thai Bank is the key distribution channel for KTC, with new customers from this source now accounting for 41 per cent of the total, against 28 per cent before, while direct sales refers 40 per cent of new customers. The other channels are telesales, KTC Touch, online and the Government Savings Bank.
Some 62 per cent of customers referred by Krung Thai Bank have active credit-card spending, while the figure for direct sales is 42 per cent.
With the bank’s impressive performance in terms of both new and active customers, KTC will focus more on that channel, she said.
Moreover, Krung Thai Bank’s main customer base comprises civil servants and state-enterprise officials, and the new minimum salary level of Bt15,000 for new-graduate government officials is an opportunity to get more active customers with a reduced risk of non-performing loans, she added.
Nutchanun also said the company now had a direct-sales focus on white-collar workers and those with a |starting salary of Bt10,000 in Greater Bangkok, while the banking channel would oversee civil servants and |state-enterprise officials in the provinces.