KBank gears for growth in mobile lending
Kasikornbank hopes to see mobile lending become popular over two years now that this channel shows lenders significant cost savings and the country has an electronic-transaction law in place to prevent disputes between creditors and borrowers.
Operating costs are generated by marketing channels such as direct sales and call centres.
However, whether more consumers will turn to mobile devices to apply for a loan will depend on the preparation of systems, awareness of consumers and relationship of sales teams.
The bank yesterday launched K-Mobile Banking Plus for 800,000 payroll customers to apply for a personal loan and for K-Mobile Banking Plus customers who are pre-qualified as potential customers.
"We have to have a database of customers with the potential to use this lending and have low risk of defaulting.
"They are the users of K-Mobile Banking Plus who don’t have time to go to physical branches," said Thawee Teerasoontornwon, executive vice president.
Customers can apply for a personal loan from anywhere at any time via K-Mobile Banking Plus. Pre-screening will take a week. After that they will be asked to sign the loan documents at one of the bank’s branches.
Thailand doesn’t have an electronic-transaction law, so customers have to sign documents at a branch, even those who apply for a loan via a mobile application.
The mobile loan app is a pilot programme.
The bank plans to provide similar services such as credit card applications in the next phase.
At KBank, personal loans are a small proportion of the portfolio because it has focused more on home loans and credit cards.
However, if the feedback from the K-Personal Loan product is good in terms of the amount of lending and lower non-performing loans, the bank might increase its focus on personal loans in the future, he said.
KBank has 800,000 personal-loan customers with outstanding loans of Bt18 billion.
It anticipates that mobile financial services will continue to grow in popularity.
There are 9 million account holders who have engaged in digital banking, and the bank has set its sights on drawing 3 million more accounts into digital banking.
KBank has secured a healthy slice – 38 per cent – of Thailand’s digital banking market.
In September, digital banking transactions via KBank’s system spurted 50 per cent to 770 million compared with the same month last year.
