SCB segments retail base under new strategy
Siam Commercial Bank is implementing sub-segmentation of its retail base to reinforce its "customer first" strategy adopted at the beginning of this year.
“The mindset on doing retail banking must change. We will not always become the leader in all segments with a push-sales strategy,” Yol Phokasub, senior executive vice president for retail banking, said yesterday.
“The customer-first strategy is to satisfy the customer as much as we can. The income or yield target will come after we provide the products and services based on the customer’s needs, not the bank’s needs,” he said.
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SCB’s retail strategy has focused on the mass, affluent and private-banking segments. Each segment has different behaviours and financial needs, Yol said. Products and services from now on will be introduced to first-jobbers, families and retirees, with three teams formed to penetrate the sub-segments.
Of SCB’s 12.35 million retail customers, 10 million are mass-market customers and the rest are affluent and private-banking customers.
The products and services to suit specific lifestyles should not always be based on the deposits of each segment, Yol said. For example, SCB credit-card holders who are not SCB depositors but show high spending should become affluent customers of the bank.
Thanks to the sub-segmentation and customer-first strategy, the yield of retail banking will gradually improve by 0.1-0.2 percentage point from 7.2 per cent, he said. The product holdings of retail banking are also expected to increase.
The retail banking group this year targets revenue growing by 24-26 per cent, while outstanding loans are expected to reach Bt600 billion, of which Bt400 billion will be mortgages and Bt170 billion to Bt180 billion auto loans.
In the first half, SCB’s retail banking business grew 25 per cent from the same period last year to Bt26 billion, with outstanding loans climbing to Bt563 billion, of which Bt376 billion was mortgages and Bt134 billion car loans.
SCB is also upgrading its branch services. Customers will no longer have to fill out a slip to make deposits, withdrawals or money transfers. The new service was introduced in 348 branches in Bangkok last month and will cover all 1,118 branches nationwide by September 10.
More than 90 per cent of branch customers were satisfied with the formless service because they can save time, the bank’s survey found.
