Land and Houses Bank (LH Bank) aims to expand its Taiwanese corporate customer base by 500 companies in five years thanks to positive growth of the Asean economy and Thailand's strong fundamentals.
A lot of Taiwanese investors, both businesses and wealthy individuals, are interested in investing in Thailand and the regional market.
Roughly 5,000 Taiwanese companies are interested in expanding their operations into Thailand, according to LH Bank.
The bank expects to add around 500 Taiwanese clients in five years, said Shih Jing-Fuh, president of LH Financial Group Plc (LHFG), the holding company of LH Bank.
Taiwan-based CTBC Bank, a major shareholder of LHFG, last year increased the shareholding from 35.62% to 46.60%.
CTBC is Taiwan's largest privately held bank and most Taiwanese interested in investing in Thailand are CTBC customers, said LH Bank.
Mr Shih said Taiwanese investors are keen to invest in other Asean countries besides Thailand. However, LH Bank does not need to expand into regional markets because CTBC also has a presence in Asean, he said.
CTBC will leverage regional networks serving Taiwanese clients in collaboration with all regional networks, said Mr Shih.
CTBC has 375 overseas outlets in 14 countries. In Asean, the bank is present in Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Myanmar.
In addition to the Taiwanese customer base, CTBC also supports LH Bank's trade finance business.
For this year, LH Bank plans to expand to the second phase, leveraging a digital platform to support trade finance. With CTBC's support and the digital platform, the bank aims to further grow the business, he said.
Mr Shih said the Russia-Ukraine war would not have a significant impact on Thai exports because it ships a small amount to the two countries.
Thailand's oil imports from Russia represent less than 1% of the country's total import value and GDP.
"The conflict should not significantly impact Thailand and the bank's trade finance business, as the bank has less exposure to Russia in the business segment," he said.
Chompoonoot Pathomporn, president of LH Bank, said the bank targets total loan growth in a range of 6-7%.
Trade finance is a key area to support loan expansion of both small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and corporate customers.
The bank wants to focus on mid-sized corporations and provincial SMEs this year, she said.
For retail banking business, the bank will emphasise mortgages this year and concentrate on the premium segment, with minimum house prices of 5 million baht, said Ms Chompoonoot.
LH Bank also wants to expand to the provincial market.
In addition, she said the bank will continue to develop its mobile banking app, M-Choice, to expand its digital banking services.
M-Choice users numbered more than 100,000 in 2021, up 27% from the year before, while the number of mobile banking transactions totalled more than 1 million, up 70% from the previous year.
