KBank gives internships to Laotian

The four students from the National University of Laos and the Banking Institute of Laos are spending three months in Bangkok, starting from June 1. KBank handles all of the interns’ expenses, totalling Bt100,000 each. KBank first senior vice president Pattanapong Tansomboon said the bank was giving importance to trading and investment in Asean countries including Laos, where it operates as a local bank. So, human-resource development was essential, because without reliable people to deal with clients, it could not conduct overseas banking business.
KBank considers that if it wants healthy growth in Laos, it has to build a reputation for reliability, and human-resource management will bring in people interested in working in the banking sector.
Pattanapong said the internship programme was the first HR development scheme KBank had designed for people with no existing interest in the bank. Previously, it had two projects for KBank staff who were interested in working abroad under the International Talent Pool programme and K-Asean Banker Academy by cooperating with bank partners.
“In Laos, we want to run a regional supply chain and regional payment facilities, which are complicated, so if we don’t have local employees who know both areas well, we might miss our targets. Developing human resources through the internships is a win-win for the bank,” he said.
The Laotian interns are undergoing three learning phases during the three-month programme. The first is classroom learning on the overall banking business. In the second phase they will learn about financial products and cash management.
The third phase is on-the-job training. Here the interns will be educated in such areas as transactional banking and credit products. They will learn about KBank’s World Business Division as well.
Pattanapong said the interns “are surprised in our classes because banking business is bigger than they expected”.
When the interns understand the importance of the Asean Economic Community and financial fields, it will enhance their career development, KBank hopes. They will be able to set career targets when they graduate.
Laotian students who want to be bankers often focus only on BCEL, the largest state-owned bank in Laos, because they believe such a career would offer them security. KBank’s internship programme is designed to make the interns think more broadly about their career choices.
“We hope that after completing the course, they will tell their friends and teachers what they learned from the internship programme, and that their stories will inspire careers in banking. Moreover, the teachers will get feedback from the interns on developing university courses,” Pattanapong said.
The interns will have a greater chance than others to work at KBank in Laos, but whether they are considered for a job will depend on their performance, he said.
At present, KBank has 27 Laotian employees, 12 of whom are in its headquarters in Bangkok and the rest in KBank’s branch in Laos.
The bank plans to recruit 10 employees in preparation for opening a second branch in Vientiane. Having local staff is important for KBank because it cannot just send Thai staff to work at its branches in overseas, Pattanapong said. The vice manager of KBank’s Vientiane branch is a local.
“Local employees could be promoted if they show a good attitude in the corporate culture. They have to uphold the reputation of KBank and they have to act for us,” he said.
KBank is in the process of expanding in Asean, and the internship programme for Laotians is a pilot project that could reaffirm the bank’s belief in motivating local people to understand the culture of KBank and attracting local people who want to work in banking, he said.
The bank plans to leverage the model to other countries in Asean, and the next internship should be applied to Cambodia, where the bank will open a branch in the third quarter of this year. The bank is also keen on setting up internships for Vietnamese students, he said.
Phonephailin Thammavong, 20, one of the four Laotian interns, said learning about the banking business in Thailand had given her knowledge about a lot of financial products that local banks in Laos don’t have.
Laotian banks should develop more products like those of Thai banks to offer more choices to clients, she said.
Thipsavanh Silakoon, 21, said that before she joined the internship, she like other students at the Banking Institute of Laos had planned to work for a local bank, but she changed her plan after finding that the world of banking is broader than she expected.
Both agreed that they were interested in working at KBank in Laos.