StanChart taps sports theme to woo young credit-card clients
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Standard Chartered Bank (Thai) is looking to build relationships with younger consumers through sports activities to expand its credit-card base.
Standard Chartered has been a sponsor of the Liverpool Football Club since 2010. This should help the Thai unit to access younger customers through sports marketing and related activities.
Thailand has about 14 million Liverpool fans and they know the brand of StanChart as a sponsor of their soccer club.
Ramakrishnan Subramanian, senior executive vice president for consumer banking, said yesterday that the bank realises that sports marketing can help increase the number of younger credit cardholders. The bank does not have many of these customers in its portfolio.
Most of the holders of its 300,000 credit cards are aged over 35, but there should be an even split between those below 35 and those over 35, the executive said.
The Thai unit will be the first to launch a Liverpool credit card next month. The move follows its launch of Liverpool debit cards in 2011. The launch, along with sports marketing ahead of Liverpool’s pre-season matches in Bangkok from July 26-28, is aimed at drawing the younger generation to the bank.
The bank will gradually increase its credit cards to 500,000 in two to three years from 300,000 cards currently.
The double-digit growth in spending via credit cards in the country over the past two years has confirmed to StanChart that there is more room to grow in the plastic card business.
Consumers here are also more familiar now with using credit and debit cards besides cash.
In the first five months, the bank saw spending on its credit cards increase by 14-15 per cent in line with the market.
The attempt to attract younger consumers is aimed at boosting active cards since active cards at present are about 70 per cent of total cards issued, when they should be higher than 70 per cent, he added.
