Hong Leong Bank group MD and CEO Kevin Lam talks about the challenges faced in growing current account savings account (CASA) deposits.
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00:00 I think the challenge is that if the interest rate continues to remain elevated, we do see
00:05 that this migration of customers from CASA to FD could continue to be in a near-term
00:10 trend until interest rates start to come down again.
00:15 And given the interest rate outlook environment, I think that may not be something that will
00:19 come so soon.
00:21 So interest rate is expected to remain probably at a higher level for a longer period of time.
00:27 And the challenge in the sense that if we are competing for CASA using interest rates,
00:34 that will not work.
00:35 So there's a lot of longer-term effort that we need to make in terms of uplifting our
00:40 cash management system capability, which Hong Leong Bank is committed to and we're just
00:45 making more investments in our cash management systems for corporate customers.
00:50 That's something that we are working on and will take a bit of time.
00:53 So it is a bit of a medium-term initiative.
00:57 And second, in terms of the community banking initiatives, you know one thing if you look
01:04 at the Hong Leong Bank numbers, Hong Leong Bank is clearly a bank that is very good at
01:08 giving out loans and managing the credit quality of the loans.
01:13 But there's opportunity if I see in terms of taking money from the customer.
01:17 So banks both give out money and also collect money from customers.
01:21 So this aspect of collecting funds from customers through deposits or wealth management is some
01:27 thing that I think we need to work on and improve.
01:29 [end]
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