JAKARTA. Mid-size lender Bank Bukopin expects to grow 15 percent of its third-party funding in priority banking this year as it prepares reward programs to attract high-end customers.

Bukopin retail director Agus Hernawan said the bank managed funds worth a total of Rp 7.5 trillion (US$569.04 million) in the priority banking segment as of last year, out of its total third-party funding worth Rp 64.1 trillion.

Bukopin’s priority banking customers accounted for at least 10,000 of the lender’s total customers of almost 1 million people as of the end of last year, Agus added.

“We also expect 15 percent growth in the number of our priority banking customers this year,” Agus said recently.

Agus said this year’s growth was lower than the 20 percent level of last year after the Financial Services Authority (OJK) asked domestic banks to limit growth to within 15 and 17 percent in third-party funding.

According to Agus, the number of prime customers continued to increase from year to year and dominated the banks’ third-party funding in terms of value.

Agus said customers categorized as Bukopin’s priority banking segment were those who had funds of at least Rp 500 million in the bank, which could include savings, time deposits and others.

To attract more customers and strengthen the loyalty of existing ones, Agus said Bukopin had held a lottery from May to December last year, offering a grand prize.

The lottery, which has been held since 2002, was offered to priority customers who had a minimum Rp 100 million in their savings, excluding their other deposits in the bank. Besides that, Agus said the bank planned to partner with investment managers and insurance companies to offer more wealth management products to its priority banking customers.

“Most priority banking funds under our management are placed in savings and time deposits, because we have limited variations of investment products, such as unit links and retail bonds,” he said.

Despite being concentrated in time deposits and savings, Agus said Bukopin’s priority customers were not highly “sensitive” when the bank decreased its deposit rate by 25 basis points following Bank Indonesia’s (BI) decision to cut its rate by the same amount in February.

Instead, Agus said the bank had recently seen a growing number of its priority banking customers as well as their deposits, which were believed to be mainly prompted by those who moved from other banks due to the better services it offered.

“The deposit rate is part of any bank’s offering to its customers, even though we also must focus on improving our services to maintain their loyalty. Services will make a difference when all banks have cut their deposit rates,” Agus said.

Agus said Bukopin had previously offered special rates of above 9.75 percent for its customers who had a large amount of funds in their time deposits when the BI rate was high at 7.75 percent, due to liquidity tightening as well as rising inflation prompted by the fuel price increases.

To maintain the quality of services, Agus said the bank had set a series of other reward and loyalty programs for its priority banking customers, but refused to detail them. (Grace D. Amianti)

Editor: Yudho Winarto