New loan programme for SMEs
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Kasikornbank yesterday launched a lending programme for small and medium-sized enterprises, increasing the credit lines on existing collateral to those customers that have regular transactions with the bank.
Patchara Samalapa, executive vice president, said yesterday that the demand for loans would increase because of the economic slowdown, but the bank must ensure these loans do not go bad.
KBank, the leader in SME loans, has become more cautious on lending to risky customers and focused more on existing clients. As a result, KBank’s SME loan portfolio grew by just 8-9 per cent in the past two years, compared with 13-15 per cent seen by some competitors.
KBank recorded loan growth of 3.2 per cent in the first six months, lower than the target of 4 per cent.
The low growth rate was not due to rejected loan applications but to limited credit lines, he said. However, fee-based income expanded by 22 per cent, better than the projected 16 per cent.
Under the bank’s new SME lending programme, it extended credit lines to as much as 200 per cent of collateral to existing customers who have current statements and have undertaken transaction activities for three months. It is offering credit lines of up to 100 per cent of collateral to new customers.
Deposit of revenue
SMEs borrowing under this programme are required to deposit 50 per cent of their monthly revenue.
During the soft launch of this programme over the past two weeks, existing customers were granted loans totalling Bt3.5 billion.
KBank expects to lend Bt15 billion under this programme.
