Bored at the bank? Two easy steps to hassle-free financial management

_ How many times a month do you have to go to banks?  

_ How many calls do you have to make just to get your financial records?

Now ask yourself what kind of financial portfolio you have. If it is a portfolio with diversified saving, lending and investment products that require multiple financial transactions, you might need integrated financial services for better management.  

Right choice of bank with a good relationship manager: People tend to have many financial services at many banks handled by different relationship managers (RM). You might not realise that it is unnecessary to use various banks’ products in order to optimise your financial portfolio. By cutting the number of your banks to just the right few, you can still choose different kinds of saving accounts, either for higher return or transactional convenience; various timed deposits or bills of exchange for medium- and long-term savings; different kinds of investment services with different choices of funds; and lending products. But the more complicated the financial products and services become, the more we need a good RM to advise us, matching products and services to suit our financial purposes.  

Remote banking and online tools: Once we have the right bank and a good financial adviser, we must ask for tools that allow us to better access and manage our portfolio as well as make our own transactions. These days, remote online facilities are the key to simplifying our financial lives, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  

Online banking is not new to the cyber world, but many of us are still unfamiliar with how it works. Online banking enables us to access, monitor and perform financial transactions anytime, anywhere via the Internet and portable devices such as laptops and smart phones. Here are some examples of what we can do through online banking:   

Online banking is fast becoming a popular choice for many, with the number of people managing accounts online significantly increasing in the past two years. Checking an account balance is one of the most popular online banking activities. 

We can also get a consolidated e-statement that combines all of our financial services and products we have with the bank – credit card, saving and TD accounts, and investment funds. On a monthly basis, we can now view the overall movements in portfolios and transactions of all financial services we have at the bank.  

Perhaps now is the time to get rid of your stacks of paper statements, avoid loss of records, reduce time taken up calling the bank, and instead use a consolidated e-statement to monitor your financial portfolios and transactions.  

Make the right choice now and your financial life could suddenly become a whole lot simpler and more convenient.

 

Deposit and loan

 

Account summary

Transaction details

Cheque book request

Change of ATM PIN

Loan payment

 

Investment service

 

Account summary

Account details

Transaction history

 

Payment

 

Bills payment

Card payment

Mobile payment

 

Transfers

 

Account to account

Interbank transfer

Overseas fund transfer

 

Pattarapong Raktabutr is head of Distribution, Consumer Banking at Standard Chartered Bank (Thai).