UOB targets affluent customers with new credit card
UNITED Overseas Bank (Thai) has introduced the UOB Privimiles credit card to tap upper-income customers and complete its coverage of all cardholder segments.
It targets the upper-income segment to account for 15 per cent of its credit-card portfolio within three years.
Yuttachai Teyarachakul, managing director of personal financial services, said affluent people currently held few of its 700,000 credit cards in circulation, and it wanted to get that proportion up, as obviously such people spend more.
UOB defines “affluent” people as those with monthly incomes of at least Bt100,000.
He said customers with deposits at UOB of Bt3 million or more would be offered this card with no annual fee.
UOB has also launched the Privimiles card through its Malaysia and Singapore units.
Yuttachai said overall credit-card spending in the Kingdom in the past three years posted annual growth of 10 per cent, while spending by Thai credit-card holders overseas posted growth of 15 per cent per annum.
Credit-card spending by UOB customers overseas in the past three years grew by 21 per cent annually.
Previously, UOB tapped the mass segment with its Black and Lady credit cards, with the latter comprising 65 per cent of the total. UOB’s Platinum card accounts for 25 per cent and the rest are Classic cards issued to qualified general customers with monthly incomes of at least Bt15,000.
“We did not have credit cards for affluent customers, and we consider that we should have all kinds of cards to serve all segments,” he said.
He said spending per card at UOB was around Bt4,000-Bt5,000 per month. After launching the new credit card, it hopes average monthly spending will be more than Bt5,000 because the upper-income segment in general spends an average of Bt30,000 per month.
UOB Thai targets issuing 60,000 Privimiles cards per year. With the card’s simple and convenient conditions, it is expected to make up 15 per cent of the bank’s credit-card portfolio within three years, he said.
