Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) aims for higher fee-based income growth in corporate banking this year to stabilise business revenue in the long term.
The bank targets 15-20% growth in wholesale banking fee-based income this year, well above the average 10% per year over the past few years, said Wasin Saiyawan, senior executive vice-president and chief wholesale banking officer.
Fee income will largely stem from trade finance business, which is expected to grow 20-25% in 2019 from 10-15% last year.
SCB, the country's largest lender by total assets, aims to increase its market share of trade finance business to 20% by year-end from 15-17% in 2018.
It plans to acquire 600 new import and export customers this year after adding 300 new company customers, most of them mid-sized firms, last year.
Partnership with large corporations to access companies under their supply chain is the bank's strategy to tap into new trade finance customers, he said.
The bank also wants to boost business activities of current trade finance clients, as their transaction value through SCB is lower than 10% of total trade volume, said Mr Wasin.
SCB plans to widen fee-based income of other corporate banking areas, especially advisory and investment banking services. Transactional banking service is another key area to encourage current account and saving account deposits.
This will support cross-selling and generate fee-based income for the wholesale banking business in the long run.
"We expect to achieve 4% income growth of the wholesale banking business this year amid marginal growth of interest income," he said.
Mr Wasin said the bank projects marginal growth of corporate loans at 1-2% this year, so interest income will also grow slightly. The bank delivered 5-6% growth in wholesale lending last year, raising the total wholesale loan portfolio to 831 billion baht.
It will mainly focus on working capital loans rather than project finance, given the revenue diversification plan of the business segment.
SCB on Monday joined forces with the Provincial Electricity Authority to develop PEA Energy Intelligence, a fully integrated digital service to help manage business and household power needs via PEA Hero platform.
