Thanachart encourages customers to see it as a transactional bank

Anurak Tantipipattana, senior vice president for CASA (current and savings accounts) and e-banking, said TBank had moved towards transactional banking for the past three years but it was not easy to achieve its goal because its customers perceive it as a hire-purchase bank.

Anurak, who joined TBank two years ago, said that to change the perception of customers, the bank had laid out a road map for developing transactional services for its depositor. These include cash withdrawals from all automated teller machines nationwide, bill payments at the bank’s own ATMs, inter-regional transfers, and free over-the-counter inter-bank transfers at the bank’s branches.

He said the bank had also improved staff communications with customers. It is also emphasising its Freever products in its advertising. 

The Freever deposit account was introduced in 2014, aimed at white-collar workers. Its customers are exempted from annual debit-card fees throughout the card’s term. 

At first, Freever customers were obliged to maintain a monthly balance of Bt15,000 in their accounts, he said. 

As a compulsory balance that high might not be attractive, however, the bank later reduced it to Bt5,000.

Last year TBank introduced two more Freever products. Freever-lite is a savings-deposit account to cater to first-jobbers and young consumers. Freever-lite depositors have to pay an annual fee of Bt250 for their debit cards, but are not required to maintain a minimum balance in their accounts.

 

Small enterprises eyed 

The Freever-more product is designed to tap small enterprises that use cheques for business transactions.

The proportion of CASA products to total deposits has risen to 42-43 per cent from 38 per cent two years ago. Anurak said the three Freever products were the key drivers of the CASA deposit proportion, which is targeted at 60 per cent by 2018.

At present, TBank has 3 million CASA deposit accounts, of which 160,000 are Freever accounts.

The bank is encouraging its customers to convert from normal savings accounts to Freever to facilitate more transactional banking. Its customers generally do not make transactions with the bank, and it hopes Freever will encourage them to use TBank as their main bank.

This would mean that its depositors undertake at least six transactions a month and hold another product such as a loan or insurance.

Anurak said that even though the bank had exempted some fees, it could seek fee income from issuing debit cards, and it would also strongly promote its Debit Sure card, which includes personal accident insurance. 

To depositors who want higher returns than transactional deposit accounts offer, the bank introduced the Ultra Savings account with interest rates of 0.75 to 1.6 per cent per annum depending on the amount of the deposit. This product is more flexible than fixed deposit accounts, as it allows cash withdrawals and earns interest.

“We told our staff at our branches that a customer should have two deposit accounts, first Freever and second Ultra Savings, and we have also trained the staff to recommend Ultra Savings as the account for the coming AnyID system,” he said.

He noted that the downturn of interest rates and the slowdown of lending had led to a declining role of fixed deposit products. Several banks including TBank have toned down launching special fixed deposit products and lowering interest rates for some of the existing products.

The bank will introduce investment products to depositors who want to be investors.