RHB launches dual credit cards

KUALA LUMPUR: RHB Bank Bhd today introduced the RHB Dual Credit Cards, which are targeted to increase new customers card acquisition by 30% by the first quarter of 2019, from 500,000 credit cards currently.
RHB acting head group retail banking Nazri Othman said the RHB Dual Credit Cards offer customers value-added lifestyle propositions with competitive benefits, through the RHB Cash Back Credit Card and RHB Rewards Credit Card for both MasterCard and Visa.
“On average, we issue over 10,000 credit cards a month and we expect 60% of new card issuance to come from the dual cards,” he told a press conference after launching the new RHB Dual Credit Cards.
Nazri said RHB’s focus on the dual cards is based on recent industry statistics, which indicate that 50% of market spend distribution spans categories that RHB Cash Back card is promoting while another 30% of market spend distribution are from the categories that RHB Rewards card is promoting.
“By consolidating the features of the two cards, we will be able to capture 80% of the credit card spending of an average customer,” he said.
RHB hopes to drive the growth of its credit card spend to achieve double-digit growth at an average of 15% compared with average market growth rates of 8%.
The RHB Cash Back Credit Card offers customers up to 10% cash back on expenditure for daily essentials such as petrol, dining, utilities and grocery and other retail spend, enabling customers to earn cash back value of more than RM600 yearly.
On the other hand, the RHB Rewards Credit Card allows customers to earn rewards points up to 10 times the amount spent on categories, which include purchase of movie tickets, online shopping, overseas spending, health and insurance as well as other retail spend.
He said the benefits of the dual cards, including potential cashback of RM600 a year as well as rewards, far outweigh the service taxes for the cards.
On another note, Nazri said the property crowdfunding scheme announced in Budget 2019 is still in its early days and is not expected to significantly impact RHB’s mortgage business.
“This is very much the key developers that are taking this initiative and it’s focused on certain segment of the market. Today, when you ask first time house buyers to come up with the 10% (payment for the house), not to mention other ancillary costs like legal fees and whatnot, they have difficulties in doing so, let alone the 20% (payment to own a house under the new scheme). The question is how do we go about handling that part of the equation?” he asked.
Nazri also questioned the scheme’s equity part on who will own the property, whether it will be the bank, consortium or the individuals.
“In the Malaysian context, after five years, you get to see the equity in the property where property prices go up. But what happens if the property prices go down? Who’s going to bear the losses or be responsible for the gap in terms of the financing in the property prices? These are the things that remain unanswered.”