Krungsri Consumer seeks partners for card, loan products
Krungsri Consumer, the consumer-finance arm of Bank of Ayudhya, believes forming partnerships to offer credit cards and instalment loans is the best way to attract quality customers.
The company is the largest card issuer in Thailand, with 6.2 million accounts. Of these, 3.2 million are First Choice instalment-loan accounts and the remainder comprises credit cards.
Krungsri offers several co-branded credit cards via a number of distribution channels, believing this will give the company an alternative way to access new customers, aside from bank branches, said Thakorn Piyapan, managing director of Krungsri Consumer.
Krungsri’s credit-card partners are Central, Tesco Lotus Visa, AIA (Thailand) and HomePro, while the distribution channel is TQM Insurance Broker.
The company recently named a new distribution channel, Premier Consumer Co, to help sell Krungsri credit cards as well as products under the Krungsri First Choice personal-loan programme. Premier Consumer will introduce the First Choice loans once it has demonstrated to Krungsri Consumer its ability to sell other products, Thakorn said.
He said the company wanted to expand its customer base through direct-to-consumer channels. Premier Consumer, a subsidiary of TQM Insurance Broker, could approach customers about applying for Krungsri cards to gain promotional benefits – including instalment loans – when they purchase insurance products.
“We are very active in seeking partners, as we want to use their networks to help reinforce spending [by customers] and to find new customers. About 70 per cent of new customers are found through our partners. This ensures we get quality customers, because the partners have screened the customers for us,” he said.
Krungsri credit-card spending in the insurance segment so far this year has grown by 30 per cent from the same period last year thanks to new insurance partners such as Thai Life Insurance, Allianz Ayudhya (Thailand) and TQM Insurance Broker.
Krungsri Consumer this year targets total credit-card spending of Bt280 billion. Spending in the first nine months was Bt230 billion – behind the target.
“Typically, November and December form the peak season of credit-card spending, and even though the country is seeing some political troubles, we have not seen any indicators to show that purchasing sentiment in the year-end season will drop,” Thakorn said.
