Sansiri teams up with SCB to introduce credit card

       Sansiri Plc (SIRI) has joined Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) in launching a credit card as a customer relationship management (CRM) activity and a channel to build brand awareness of its propertymanagement subsidiary Touch Property.
       Samatcha Promsiri, assistant vicepresident for marketing, said the developer aimed to increase the number of residents at its housing projects who use Touch services to 2,600 from 500-600 now, or to 20% from 4% of the total of 13,000 housing units it has sold since its establishment.
       "Revenue for our subsidiary may not be that much but we aim to attract our existing customers to try services from the subsidiary as most of our customers do not know about Touch and its services," he said.
       SCB Sansiri Platinum, the first housing credit card, allows cardholders to use reward points plus additional cash to redeem for services including laundry,cleaning and gardening services provided by Touch. The card aims to draw not only existing Sansiri customers but also new ones, with a target of 50,000 cards in the first year.
       "This is one of our CRM activities in which we have joined with SCB. The bank also plans to offer more products to customers, for example, insurance,"said Mr Samatcha."The spending behaviour of credit cardholders will also tell us which new products should be offered to them."
       The minimummonthly salary for applicants will be 35,000 baht, the rate which Sansiri is confident all its cus-tomers are eligible, even buyers of its lower-priced housing brands such as My Condo. New card applicants who also buy Sansiri units will get a 5% discount on down payments paid through the card.
       Currently, SCB has more than one million credit-card holders, with each carrying 1.8 cards on average.
       Sansiri also plans to hold a housing fair from Oct 1-4, offering 428 units from 29 projects worth a combined 2 billion baht. The fair will offer a 50% discount on down payment. It targets sales of one billion baht at the fair and 4.8 billion baht in the fourth quarter of the year.
       To date, it has a sales backlog of 16.55 billion baht to be realised in the next three years, with 8.38 billion baht to be booked in 2010 and 5.3 billion baht in 2011. About 74% of the sales are condominiums,14% single houses and 12%townhouses. Total revenue this year was estimated at 17 billion baht.
       SIRI shares closed yesterday on the Stock Exchange of Thailand at 4.50 baht,down two satang, in trade worth 120.17 million baht.