CIMB Thai Bank bucks the trend by offering high-interest deposit product
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WHILE much of the banking industry has backed away from offering special interest rates to lure deposits, CIMB Thai Bank is taking advantage of the eased competition to attract new customers.
The bank is using the occasion of Songkran to launch a special campaign offering a fixed three-month deposit product paying 2.3 per cent per annum, compared with a mere 1 per cent elsewhere in the banking industry.
“As a small bank, we have to use pricing to attract customers because we don’t have many branches. But when customers do come in, we can offer cross-selling products to them as well,” said CIMBT senior executive vice president Adisorn Sermchaiwong.
However, if the bank faces excess liquidity, |it might hold off on deposit campaigns as the big banks have done, he said.
As long as the bank continues experiencing growth from housing loans, it needs funding to support that lending.
In the first three months of this year, the bank acquired new deposits from retail customers of Bt10 billion, but even if it pays higher interest rates, the cost of these funds is under control thanks to the recent cut in the central bank’s policy rate.
In all of last year, CIMBT had new deposits |from retail customers of Bt20 billion, so bringing in Bt10 billion in just the first three months of 2015 seems high. This figure might reflect that customers don’t have confidence in the current economic situation, so they are choosing to put their money in the bank.
Most of CIMBT’s retail deposits are from wealthy customers. This year, it targets Bt25 billion in new deposits from retail clients.
