Ngern Tid Lor is a leader in Thailand in providing financial services to low-income, underbanked residents. By slowly opening up their services to a digital platform for their customers, they are starting to make a difference in their customer’s financial education as well as instilling good financial habits in them.
Low-income citizens have different needs that need to be addressed by the financial companies providing their services. Because Ngern Tid Lor has over three decades providing financial services to the people of Thailand, they know their customer’s needs well.
They realize their customer’s lives would be easier if they had secure access online to their banking information and had access to transactional banking services they could perform without having to go to a bank service counter. They developed a Line Official Account that enabled their customers to view account information such as their account balance and the movement of funds in a completely secure format that was easy to navigate. The account enabled bar code reading as well as money transfer capabilities to up to 22 banks in Thailand.
Instilling Good Habits
The next step in the digital transformation of Ngern Tid Lor is the creation of a mobile app that will further expand its customer’s abilities to manage their finances. The mobile app will also allow their customers to make their loan and insurance payments online.
To further instill good financial habits in their customers, they plan to set up a rewards system where customers can earn points for staying current with their debt payments. These points can be redeemed for special prizes. There is also a special ChatBot, named ‘Chang Jai’ who can provide answers to financial questions like smart spending.
Expanding Markets
The digital transformation of the financial services company has created an opportunity that both benefits the company as well as its customers. By using this digitally transformative period to shift their focus more to the customer’s needs and less to the company’s profit, they got the idea to develop their mobile app.
But in the development of this app to serve the unique needs of their customers, they have discovered they have created a new opportunity to enter foreign markets by introducing their mobile app on a regional basis. There are low-income people all over the world. These people desperately need the services of micro-lenders and financial services providers who understand their limitations and can design programs around them.
Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia are all countries in the immediate region that also have a large percentage of low-income people in their population. They all could benefit from the services offered in Thailand by Ngern Tid Lor.
Focus Brings Clarity that Benefits Everyone
Ngern Tid Lor is one company that has learned that if you focus on serving your customers to the best of your abilities, this selfless act can have unforeseen good results that are beneficial to the company. It just takes a company with vision and foresight to carry out this focus on a company-wide basis.