TMB Bank, the country's seventh-largest bank by assets, has launched a free cheque pickup service for small and midsized enterprises (SME) to increase its customer base.
The service targets SMEs with annual sales of 50-500 million baht, said senior executive vice-president Trirong Butragaht. It picks up cheques from customers and deposits them to accounts opened at the bank. The service will cover 27 provinces initially.
TMB has 26,000 SME customers with annual sales of 50-500 million baht. Of the total, 80% use cheques for financial transactions.
He said some 140 SMEs have already applied for the service. TMB hopes to sign up 250-300 SMEs by year-end, with 400-450 million baht in deposits expected.
TMB will use an outsourcing company to collect cheques, which will increase costs but not to unmanageable levels.
"We want our customer base to expand rapidly because the service is free. Higher lending and deposits should eventually contribute to higher income," he said.
TMB is more focused on fee-based income from SMEs rather than loan growth. The bank's lending and deposits from SMEs are expected to gradually increase from 86 billion and 63 billion baht, respectively.
Asset quality control and lowering SME non-performing loans (NPLs) are focuses for the bank, with loan refinancing one method to reduce bad loans.
The bank's SME NPL percentage fell 4.8% of SME loans outstanding at the end of June from 6% at the end of last year.
TMB shares closed on the SET yesterday at 3.12 baht, up eight satang, in trading worth 1.95 billion.