Tisco to transform IT system to deal with modern trends
TISCO Bank is transforming its information-technology system over three years to help strengthen its sales force’s marketing to younger customers and to deal with the trend towards digital banking and financial technology.
Oranuch Apisaksirikul, chief of Tisco Financial Group, said yesterday that the IT transformation was the backbone of an open architecture to deal with the upcoming financial technology, or fintech.
IT companies will be hired to implement the transformation, so the cost will not be much. The increase might be only 20-30 per cent in the first year of transformation.
Digital banking means strengthening the marketing team to service retail customers quickly and developing mobile applications for its services.
Branches are still essential for serving high-net-worth customers, but its existing network of 50-60 branches is sufficient. Their customer base is wealthy individuals, most of whom are older.
However, in the future, fintech and digital banking will play a bigger role in the banking industry. Younger customers will make financial transactions via their mobile devices, so the ability of the marketing team to sell to these customers should be enhanced.
The proportion of mobility customers after 2018 is not expected to grow substantially because the bank’s major customer base is high-net-worth individuals, but instalment-loan customers are expected to use mobiles for debt payment.
Tisco recognises that the ageing society in Thailand is spawning a high number of wealthy people who are expected to give importance to savings and investment. The group will capitalise on this opportunity through bancassurance and funds.
Tisco Bank’s depositor base is about 100,000 savers with a combined balance of Bt180 billion.
Tisco Bank had catered to the mid- to upper-income customers with Bt10 million to Bt20 million in assets before expanding to middle-income earners with Bt5 million. It will try to focus more on that segment to expand its retail customer base.
This segment is expected to use mobility financial services, which is in line with the group’s transformation.
Tisco Financial Group last week reported financial results of Bt4.25 billion last year, which was even with 2014.
The group hopes that its net income in 2016 will be stable or improve on 2015 based on the instalment-loan business, which is major part of its portfolio, and the reduced need for loan loss provisions.
“The quality of loans is not the point compared with how to make loans grow amid the economic uncertainty,” Oranuch said.
“We used to project our growth based on two times [that of] gross domestic product. The picture of the Thai economy has changed, so the chances of our growth following that formula might be slim.”
