TMB Bank woos mid-size firms with cheque pick-up service
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TMB Bank has added a cheque pick-up service to tap the medium-sized enterprise market as part of its efforts to encourage them to use TMB their main bank and leave more deposits with it.
“We designed the TMB cheque pick-up service by sending a messenger team to receive cheques from customers, so they don’t need to come to our branches. This service has no fee, but the bank hopes it will help cut operating costs,” Trirong Butragaht, senior executive vice president for business banking, said yesterday.
Medium-sized enterprises are defined as companies with annual sales from Bt50 million to Bt500 million, or up to Bt2 billion for those upcountry.
Although fund transfers are playing an increasing role in transactions these days because of technology, cheques are still part of doing business, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises.
The bank found that about 80 per cent of SMEs continue to prefer cheques as a payment method.
Most SMEs are controlled by owners who want to manage cash and payments through cheques.
The growth of cheque transactions is in the single digits compared with double digits for fund transfers from electronic channels and automated teller machines.
SME sector
TMB is a bank that is active in the SME sector. It has 26,000 medium-sized or “business banking” customers, of which 7,000 are active depositors. Outstanding loans from that segment have expanded 11 per cent to Bt86 billion from the end of last year.
The bank wants its borrowers to become depositors as well, so it came up with the new service. The accounts for receiving cheques are current and savings. Those accounts are regarded as sources of low-cost funds for banks.
The service has been soft-launched for four months with 20 SMEs and has acquired deposits of about Bt60 million.
Now, about 140 SMEs are users.
After the formal kick-off yesterday, TMB hopes that 300 of its 26,000 business customers will apply for the service and deposit about Bt400 million to Bt450 million at the bank.
“We expect the number of SMEs using TMB as their main bank by the end of this year will increase to 8,500 from 8,000 currently thanks to the cheque pick-up service,” he said.
Year to date, the bank has welcomed 1,545 new customers, while its deposits have risen by 16 per cent and cost of funds fallen by 10 basis points.
