Published on October 18, 2005

BankThai has started reorganising both its front and back-office banking operations in preparation for financial liberalisation, the reorganisation started early this month.

BankThai president Phirasilp Subhapholsiri said last week that financial liberalisation was inevitable and that the bank will prepare for it as best as possible.

This month, the bank adjusted its front-office operation into four departments for the management of products, sales, service channels and operations.

The sales management department has been divided into three units: corporate, institution and retail banking.

Back-office operations were also adjusted to focus on support, risk management, finance, organisation activity and human resources.

“The bank’s new structure is aimed to support our full-speed business dealings next year,” Phirasilp said. “We want to make the bank’s operations clearer. At the same time, this will bring about more functional operation under the universal banking platform and this will result in meeting the bank’s business targets.”

He said the bank would like to make its revenue structure more balanced over the next three to four years.

The structure the bank wants to see would comprise corporate banking (40 per cent), institutional banking (20 per cent) and retail banking (20 per cent). The remainder would come from other businesses and financial subsidiaries.

BankThai is ready to complete its bad-asset management campaign, as agreed with the central bank’s rescue fund at the end of this year. The contract was signed with the Financial Institutions Development Fund, which made the bank responsible for the management of Bt302 billion in bad assets of the 13 defunct financial institutions. After completing bad asset management next year, BankThai is likely to complete negotiations with its new strategic partner.

The bank might increase registered-capital for a new prospective partner while FIDF’s share holding in the bank would dilute from the 49 per cent at present.

Phirasilp declined to disclose details about the new partner.

Somruedi Banchongduang

The Nation

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