Thailand's KBank to provide consultancy to retail customers

Kasikornbank will get more involved in financial advisory banking to help retail customers.

The bank's consultancy service will provide a professional adviser at each KBank branch to give free financial advice to customers.

Pakorn said customers using the K-Expert service would not have to pay for the advice, as the bank wants to provide an added-value service to retail customers and encourage them to make KBank their main port of call for all their financial business.

KBank executive vice president Pakorn Partanapat said the bank had allocated more than Bt100 million for the intensive training of 800 experts. The number of experts will be increased to 2,000 next year to provide a full service to customers at every branch.

A KBank survey found that 40 percent of customers would regard having a financial adviser at their branch as essential for financial management planning.

He said the bank divides retails clients into three segments - mass, middle income and affluent - so as to offer appropriate products and services to meet each group's demands.

Mass customers are graduates or first-jobbers who have no experience in financial management. K-Expert advisers will provide this category with simple advice, such as allocating 10 per cent of their salary for savings.

The advisers will offer wealth-creation consultancy to middle-income customers, and advise on wealth security to affluent customers, the executive said.

KBank hopes the new service will help bring in an additional 1 million retail customers. It currently has a retail customer base of about 10 million.

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