ianguygil

I am glad as an American we are going to help. I am sure there will be the usual American bashing that accompanies every thread of this nature but I don't see anyone else spending the kind of cash the US spends on aid around the world.

I am also am American and while I welcome the visit of Mrs Clinton, we should never deceive ourselves that we are more generous in terms of aid to developing countries than others. We definitely have military and logistical capabilities that others can not match. But as a percentage of GDP our foreign aid is sorely lacking

I just found this site with a quick search, and I think that this page gives some perspective on this (I have really no idea about the rest of the site I have never seen it before).....

http://www.vexen.co.uk/countries/charity.html

This is in no way US bashing. I won't get into any of the political issues about aid to Israel, Egypt and Pakistan. Let's just hope that the US can help the Thai government and the Thai people to make life better as so many are suffering in the flooding right now. We could certainly use the help from a friend.

^the liquidity ratio that banks are legally required to maintain in UK is 12.5%, divide 100 by 12.5 and you get 8. So they are only required to maintain 1/8th of the money actually in cash that they lend out.

Credit cards may have very high write offs, but they also have very high APRs (15% ~ 23%) to pay for this risk and are risk adverse in handing them out. The CC divisions are also a separate part of the banking system, so how does that justify banks charging customers to deposit money into their standard personal account, especially as your CC provider might not even be your bank eg. Virgin?

Sorry, I was in a meeting when I typed the response.

The ratio you refer to is Capital Adequacy. It is not a ratio of Deposits to Loans, it is ratio of the Bank's Capital to Loans (acually all Assets). So your calculation is about Capital, it is nothing to do with liquidity.

That's not what I learnt in Economics, the 12.5% had to be liquid to meet calls for cash.

This is my absolute last post on this thread as I am busy - in meetings this weekend...

Capital Adequacy Ratio (the one you mentioned) ensures that the banks have some of their own money in the equation when they lend / trade and can absorb losses without putting depositors funds at risk. Hereare links. There are lots you can research yourself.... ..

http://www.investope...p#axzz1dNT7jclE

http://en.wikipedia...._adequacy_ratio

Liquidity and the Loan to Deposit Ratio - this is where companies like Northern Rock got themselves in trouble, and Lehman. They were highly leveraged and the borrowed hugely in the short term markets. Once they started to have troubles nobody wanted to lend to them, or only would at hugely high rates. This is comparable of what is happening to Italy and Greece from the Sovereign Debt but some of these banks were literally financing huge amounts every day.....As an Economics graduate, which I am not I am a propeller head in Computer Science - you will understand this well and how this directly relates to liquidity.

http://www.financefo...osit-Ratio.html

Most of the major banks in Thailand, particularly us or at least last time I looked, are on the conservative end of this and have slightly more deposits than assets, hence are net providers of liquidity. Some of the smaller banks are about 1.5 times assets to deposits and borrow.

Over and out...:jap:

^the liquidity ratio that banks are legally required to maintain in UK is 12.5%, divide 100 by 12.5 and you get 8. So they are only required to maintain 1/8th of the money actually in cash that they lend out.

Credit cards may have very high write offs, but they also have very high APRs (15% ~ 23%) to pay for this risk and are risk adverse in handing them out. The CC divisions are also a separate part of the banking system, so how does that justify banks charging customers to deposit money into their standard personal account, especially as your CC provider might not even be your bank eg. Virgin?

Sorry, I was in a meeting when I typed the response.

The ratio you refer to is Capital Adequacy. It is not a ratio of Deposits to Loans, it is ratio of the Bank's Capital to Loans (acually all Assets). So your calculation is about Capital, it is nothing to do with liquidity.

^the liquidity ratio that banks are legally required to maintain in UK is 12.5%, divide 100 by 12.5 and you get 8. So they are only required to maintain 1/8th of the money actually in cash that they lend out.

Credit cards may have very high write offs, but they also have very high APRs (15% ~ 23%) to pay for this risk and are risk adverse in handing them out. The CC divisions are also a separate part of the banking system, so how does that justify banks charging customers to deposit money into their standard personal account, especially as your CC provider might not even be your bank eg. Virgin?

Exactly my point on the credit card that we charge/price for risk. Secured credit like home mortgages have commensurately lower interest rates. I am glad we agree there.

I have no idea why you are quoting the UK again. This is Thailand ......

Our Credit Card division is part of the Bank. Not separate apart from internal organizational considerations. You seem to be talking about the UK environment, not Thailand, again. We run our own issuer and acquiring network.

As a Banker I guess I will never win the argument on fees. Interesting that Doctors, Dentists, Accountants Lawyers Surveyors Mechanics etc all charge for their services and we pay without comment. Banking is a commercial operation that requires considerable investment in Bricks and mortar, staffing, IT frameworks, Capital requirements and with Shareholders to consider.

In support of the Thai Banking system in relation to my home country the fee structure here is very cheap. At home I would pay the equivalent of minimum 4000 baht in bank fees per year just to run a standard personal account. I can avoid most of this if I care to leave equivalent 125,000 baht in the non interest paying account.

In Thailand, I pay no account fees and am only required to have 500 baht to open the account. I pay 200 baht a year for my ATM card.

If the services I chose to use are considered expensive, I have the choice of not using them, but then have to consider the cost of finding an alternative i.e. driving to the provincial area to pay over some money.

In the case of BBL if my account remains inactive for 12 months and the balance is below 2000 baht an inoperative fee of 50 baht a month will apply.

Let the debate continue

as a banker I would expect that your account with the bank you work for incurs no fees?

And would also expect that you would easily be able to find out which banks don't impose monthly or yearly fees on a standard personal account.

As for comparisons with fee charging professionals banks make money from the money that is deposited with them. They are able to loan out 8X the amount deposited, at inteest rates 10X higher than they pay. That they also want to charge the depositor to allow him to provide the bank with the means that it needs to make this vast profit is unconscionable.

Absolutely wrong on the leverage ratio. 8 times, wherever did you get that from??? You should really check your facts before posting. You can check to see our balance sheet that our loan to deposit ratio is very conservative.

As Dave said as employees we pay normal fees and normal interest rates. The same applied when I worked for Bank of America in San Francisco (not the think that calls itself Bank of America now in Charlotte). No fringe benefits.

As for the difference between deposit and lending rates, that is a deliberate policy of central banks around the world to provide liquidity and it is a much smaller spread in Thailand that in the UK or US. It also completely ignores the risk posed by various lending products (such as Credit Card) which are unsecured credit with very potentially high writeoffs as many banks in the West have learnt in the past few years. it

Just out of curiosity, how do the laws and practices in Thailand that affect bank profitability compare with those of the USA and UK? Do they have stricter capital requirements and regulation of risk, or looser?

It is pretty hard to generalize

I would say that the top Thai banks are in general very well capitalized.

All banks are now subject to the same BASEL regulations and the central banks in each country implement these in various ways. We are a very conservative, very well capitalized (private capital, not government) and highly liquid. Our loan to deposit ratio is strong (unlike banks like LEHMAN which is what got them in trouble).

In the US they really focus just on the top tier of banks for BASEL as the top 10 make up more than 80% of the market.

In the UK the government owns huge shares in major institutions last time I looked (RBS, LLOYDS etc.).

In Thailand banks are limited to Banking which is a result of the problems in 97. For those of us who were here then, that showed the issues which can be caused when banks diversify too much into other lines of business and do not diversify their risks.

So a hard question to answer. I will leave that up to the economists :jap:

not strange at all having a wee fee for a cash deposit

the absolutely most expensive service a bank can offer is the handling of cash,

that being deposit or withdrawal or foreign currency exchange or denomination exchange

the handling of cash is COSTLY for any bank

why shouldn't they charge for it

Melvin Melvin... you sound like a thai business owner stuck in the past, it is convoluted thinking like yours that prolongs Thai banks and business' thinking that they are doing you a favor by letting you buy their products or deposit your money in their bank. They convinced the gullible masses of this and it was common practice here when they had a captive market but that is slowly changing. They begin to learn when we take our money or business elsewhere. It is a slow process but in this Global economy they will find out that 'the times they are a changing'.

I transfered my money from one province BB to another province and the BB manager couldn't cancel all fees fast enough when I got up and started to walk out.

He said "no charge for ATM card or for deposit money, no charge anything". Now I was depositing a large sum I grant you but the more people vote

with their feet the sooner Thai business will wise up and realize that we are doing them a favor by shopping with them not visa versa. Their elitist attitude always leaves me wondering why the thai people haven't seen thru this <snip> years ago.

How many depositors do you think a bank would get right now if it offered free services to the general public? Such a bank would force the other banks to become competitive.

Such a bank would need to raise revenue in another way. An increase in the NIM (Net Interest Margin), i.e. the spread between deposits and lending, for example. This would imply lowering deposit rates and/or increasing lending rates.

As Dave said it is strange that the fees charged by all other service providers are acceptable but some seem to feel that banks should not charge fees. We are a commercial enterprise, we are not state owned like so many UK and US banks.

We provide a service and we charge for it in a competitive and regulated market. As AURELIUS said, the regulators are looking at fees and banks need to comply with any changes they impose. We do listen to customers and especially in these challenging times of flooding we are making accomodations to try to help the Thai public. Please see the attached link, we, along with all members of the TBA (Thai Bankers Association) are waiving inter-regional ATM Withdrawal fees during this period to help those impacted by the flood who have had to travel to other provinces.

http://www.bangkokba...elease2nov.aspx

I do think that the term "scam" should be looked at by the moderators as that is a complete insult to the Bank an implies immoral and illegal activities. That is just silly. Posters should be more responsible.

Ian

Given the current situation with the floods this is not being advertised yet, but I decided it was worth giving TV members a headsup. This product from PREVX is a state of the art malware detector and effectively reduces the risk from Phishing. It is free for all Bangkok Bank customers to download and is configured to protect them when using iBanking.

PREVX is one of the new generation Cloud-based solutions. It will also give you the option to scan your machine for free. But if you want to clean it you will need to either buy their full product or use another product.

However, this is more than a normal AV solution and when online it really does provide an additional layer of protection. You can run SafeOnline with your existing AV solution turned on.

Please just follow this link and please give it a try. MAC version coming soon. Thanks

Ian

http://www.bangkokbank.com/Online%20Banking/For%20Personal/iBanking/Services/Pages/Prevx.aspx

If a government (not just Thailand) borrows large sums from abroad and brings it back home to finance project they sell the foreign currency and buy the local currency. That puts upward pressure on the local currency.

Conversely, should the government pay for the foreign currency loan using local currency, that will put downward pressure on the local currency.

Any guesses when the Thai Baht will start to depreciate on the basis of this fictitious scenario?

The foreign debt is currently very low, so the repayments will be a trickle and it is offset by direct investment, exports and things like tourism. Whereas the initial fund raising will be a huge amount repatriated in a very short time.

I have absolutely no idea when the currency will start to depreciate. I am not smart enough to know that one.......

Also, rather than looking at which currency is going up, you should look at the converse, which is going down. It may just be that the other options are so lousy. The US saying they will keep negative real interest rates for years more.....

Ian,

Thank you for your comment. I have been curious about this.

And, after thinking a moment, I remember also that the Japanese currency appreciated after the tsunami.

Yes, exactly, The JPY appreciated for different reasons (they are self funding for their domestic debt so no real need to raise funds abroad) but they did start to bring back funds from abroad. Also, foreign investors wanted to bet on the huge recovery fund planned at that time. Finally, the other currency options were either lousy (USD etc.) or already richly valued (CHF or AUD).

I almost want to sue a well known University in the US, since everything they taught me about economics does not apply in the bubble that is Thailand

The government announces that they are going to have to borrow millions (billions) of Baht for reconstruction yet the value of the Baht goes UP

If a government (not just Thailand) borrows large sums from abroad and brings it back home to finance project they sell the foreign currency and buy the local currency. That puts upward pressure on the local currency. Also, the use of these borrowed funds will stimulate the local economy. So it is not at all unusual for the local currency to appreciate, at least in the short term. This is my personal opinion not related to my employment.

Ian

Here are the Thai tide tables. You can see that today there are 2 high tides, around 4 am today and just before 4 pm. It also shows the heights of the tides.

Good luck to everybody.

http://www.saltwater-dreaming.com/surfing-resources/thailand-tide-charts.htm

is there any plans to allow "," commas and other special characters in the online banking contact form? It's hard to write corrrect sentences without the ability to use "special characters."

Sorry, I am in Europe on business this week so I did not see this until Dave gave a heads-up.

We and pretty much all transactional sites, block such "special characters" from most fields as a security measure. This is an established best practice and it helps to prevent many types of attacks like SQL Injections. However, if there is a specific field where you would like to enter these to make a sentence more meaningful, please PM me with the exact field (which page) and I will have my people who do the real work so we can take a look.

But for now it will stay blocked and secure :jap:

Best regards

Ian

Hi Dave and Ian. i'm not sure if this is your field but just to make you aware that the BB website seems to be experiencing some problems

I tried to set up a transfer over weekend to a 3rd party account but the site says that service is currently unavailable, also tried to transfer some money today to a 3rd party account that I send money to on a regular basis via the website but again got the same message.

Hi, there should not have been any problems over this weekend. None that we know of. There is about a 10 minute period every late night around 11 pm when the back end (Host on the Mainframe) has to do some housekeeping and while you can logon to iBanking successfully you can not move funds. Was that the case? This is not a technology limitation on the Mainframe but a constraint of the application on the back end. We plan to address this next year.

What message did you get? I assume you mean iBanking not the Public Website (www.bangkokbank.com). We do need to know when there are problems. If you are in Thailand please always call 1333 to report any issues. Obviously at times the problem is with your ISP as we cannot control end to end delivery on the Internet. But we do monitor the apps and servers. Please give some specifics and I can get somebody to look into it.

As you may have noticed there are 2 members of the Bangkok Bank staff who participate in this forum who are available to ThaiVisa members to resolve issues you may have. This assistance is available to our existing customers or to potential customers.

I am an exec with main focus in IT and a background in international banking. So I will be involved from time to time. But Daveroc, who has revealed his true identity on this forum, is a consultant who assists us with Expat Relations. So I would view him as your "Tier 1 Support" and me as more of a Tier 2 or 3 should things get particularly complicated.

Dave has a huge experience in retail banking and he has the contacts in the operational side to escalate things and contact local branch managers should that be necessary. Dave has already posted his email address as [email protected], so please contact him either via PM or via his direct email should you have any need for assistance.

I will not hand out my direct email as I have a very large staff and manage the development of many of the products you all use directly. So, again, please use Dave as your Tier 1.

I hope this in no way breaks the rules of the forum as Dave had already revealed his true identity (no, not Bruce Wayne). We are not trolling for business but rather extending a helping hand.

I will still get involved when needed to address specific issues and to be generally annoying :jap: but Dave has the bandwidth to help you as part of his core role.

Ian

Hello Ian,

do you work for the Bangkok Bank?

Thanks for the advice already given.

Kind regards.

Yes, I am an exec in Bangkok Bank. You can check my other posts and see that I have helped plenty of others as have Daveroc who is responsible for Expat relations

As I noted you can do this in a branch, but if you have any problems you can contact me in advance. You will need ID (for non Thai residents that is a passport). And it would be good if you have your old ATM card and your account passbooks. Thanks

Ian

Not a problem. You can go to the branch and we can take care of this. You can PM me if you need any special help.

Ian

Without getting too far into this as I am in a meeting, I think it is also very important to differentiate between a Virus and a Trojan, as these really sophisticated attacks we have all seen are normally Trojans. All banks had a problem with this around the end of 2009 and into 2010 and most found a layered approach to get around it.

The biggest problem in Thailand are the very large number of "idiots" who use unlicensed software. Such unlicensed software almost always comes with one or more "presents" often in the form of Trojans or other malware. I can not tell you how false a saving this is. We are just about to launch another free product for customers to help to protect them when they use our sites against Trojans and other malware. But more about that later.

I will post more on our recommended best practices later. Please note that Trojans affect all platforms. I will hear Apple fans tell me that the App Store protects them, and that is true to some extent. But given the HUGE percentage of Jailbroken i-everythings in this market, again because they are "idiots" and like to have "free" software, that partial protection is pretty much negated.

The only real protection is the multi-layered approach with out of band authentication and processing using things like SMS for sensitive transactions as we do on iBanking. Strong authentication on APPS is NO protection against Trojans, in fact I once met the CISO of JP Morgan who told me their most hacked application had tokens at logon.

More later. I am in a meeting.

Ian

Ian,

I have followed this and other threads regarding Bangkok Bank. And, your excellent postings were a reason for me to open an account with BB several months ago. I now transfer money through the New York Branch to Thailand. And, have had no problems. And, will add that the BB call center is English speaking and helpful.

Thanks for all your help.

Thank you. Glad it all worked out. We try to make this seamless. I know how frustrating it can be dealing with banks in different countries.

Sorry if I have to get into the internals of Banking at times. Otherwise it is hard to explain what customers experience with SWIFT etc.

So if you can give me a quick description of the transaction I can try to explain what we and the other banks I have worked for would do.

Ian,

i have transferred today a six digit USD amount from my bank in Singapore to my personal account in Thailand and i will do exactly the same tomorrow. on monday i expect from your bank the usual phone call "do you accept xx.xx exchange rate?" i'm not a client of Bangkok Bank but all transfers from my banks in Singapore and Luxembourg to my Thai bank have been routed since years through your bank.

if i give you the details by e-mail can you find out in what way (or perhaps not) NY was involved?

OK, Naam. Here we go.

In the scenario you gave above, it seems that your bank in Singapore is a Correspondent of Bangkok Bank and not of your local bank (I think you said SCB). So you would move xxx,xxx USD to Thailand which means that the Singapore bank would most likely credit their Due To account in USD that we hold with them for the xxx,xxx dollars and would send us a SWIFT payment instruction to credit your THB account at SCB for y,yyy,yyy THB where y,yyy,yyy/xxx,xxx is the Exchange Rate. So we would set the rate (if you did not have an FX Contract) based on our Treasury (for 6 figures you should really get an special FX rate by contacting us first). We would then transfer the funds in y,yyy,yyy THB (minus charges for SWIFT and the Domestic Transfer) by the local clearing system (ITMX or whatever) to the credit of account at SCB. All that detail would have been in the Payment Instruction (SCB as the Beneficiary Bank and you as the Beneficiary) and we are the Intermediary of your bank in Singapore used to clear the funds in Thailand.

So we in Bangkok Bank end up with USD in the bank in Singapore. And we can either choose to build up our position in USD (if the Treasury decides) or we can sell those USD onwards to other customers who need USD.

Please remember that an account is a promise to pay a certain amount in a certain currency on certain terms (maturities, advance notice etc). It does NOT imply that this currency is always maintained on hand, although more conservative banks tend to keep their positions and exposures pretty much in line. It is up to a bank to manage their liquidity (we are an EXTREMELY liquid bank) and their currency positions. As you can see some very illiquid banks can run into problems when their funding dries up. Please think of LEHMAN as the most recent case study, or Northern Rock in the UK. So the implication is that just because we have accounts in USD does not necessarily mean USD in the US.

I our case things are difference because we have a branch in New York. However, our USD accounts are drawn on the Head Office in Thailand. We do use our branch in New York as our correspondent, just as large international banks use their International branch network.

This is a hugely complex subject and I will not clog up this post with too many details. If you PM me I can give you my email. Then you can send me the details of the exact transfers and I can tell you what happened.

The post you gave where you said SCB called to set the rate was probably a case where the bank had a direct correspondent relationship with SCB. So they credited a USD Due To account in Singapore owned by SCB, they sent the Payment Instruction via SWIFT, then SCB called to set the rate with you.

Like I said, PM me and we can discuss.

I can not say exactly what is reported where in the US as it depends on the bank providing the Due To in USD to the Thai bank.

You can definitely transfer USD from Singapore to a USD account in Thailand, we offer more than 10 currencies for Foreign Currency accounts in Thailand, the most recent if which is the Chinese Yuan. This then gives you the option of converting into THB when you want to.

Wow, this was a long post and I thought it would be fast

Ian

Ian,

did you read my last posting? for the first time no call from your bank but from mine. beats me!

The network is so slow here I was still replying to the message before. I'll PM me email now. Sorry. This is too hard via supposed 3G

Many moons ago when being paid in US$ and trying to get them transferred from my offhore bank to my onshore location the bank told me the delay was due to the money having to go though Wachovia Bank in New York and explained that ALL US$ moved around the world went that route.

Naam, can do, I will PM you with my email. You can then post whatever you want. Doing this from my BB in the meeting so I apologise for any errors

Ian

Please PM me if you want some idea of what we pay this kind of experience. I can not discuss our salary levels on this forum. But if you have approached them you should expect to get a local rate. If they approached you abroad it would be different.

I hire a lot of people, including .NET and other developers. So I can give you an idea of what is normal and what is not.

I can tell you that for 2 years of experience you would normally not be a target for an expat position unless you have some very exceptional skills and experience.

FYI, I have a very large number of staff, all Thai, and you can find most kinds of skills and experience in Thailand except for some of the most senior staff, architects and emerging technologies. SAP, while there is huge demand, is not one of those technologies.

Ian

Naam, I don't have a lot of time to reply on this, but the fact is that a payment to an offshore USD account does not have to go through a US bank. The accounting as I said may well affect correspondent accounts in the US (our USD accounts are drawn on our branch in New York) but the payment will not directly involve the US.

take your time Ian! whatever you dig up is precious information for me because i'm in charge of handling a fistful portfolios and their relevant yield dispersion for some good friends.

nota bene: i am not talking about "correspondent" banks. i am talking about information popping up in New York and/or Frankfurt for whatever reasons unkown to me. this is the gospel from "real" banks. why should they have any interest to spread wrong information?

Hi Naam

I will try to get to this tomorrow. I am in annual planning cycle here and you can imagine how much fun that is ..

Obviously as a responsible bank we comply with all the reporting regulations. Maybe if you give me 1 of your use case scenarios I can take you though how it would work and we can see if we are both saying the same thing but using different words. So if you can give me a quick description of the transaction I can try to explain what we and the other banks I have worked for would do. Thank you

Ian

techically all USD transfers do not have to go via the US. I think there is some misunderstanding here. While it may affect correspondent accounts in the US via NOSTRO/VOSTRO accounts, the accounts involved in the transfer can all be offshore.

i [not so] humbly beg to differ Ian. please update your information.

for what it's worth... a transfer of USD between two banks in Singapore goes with IBAN details via NY even if these two banks are located in the same building. something similar applies to €UR transfers which are routed via Frankfurt, Germany. i have transferred EUR from Singapore to Thailand. Bangkok Bank is the intermediate bank in Thailand for my SG bank when i make EUR transfers. BUT, according to my bank, the "booking" is done in Frankfurt.

this fact does not concern me but it concerns those Germans who bank in SG, live partially in Thailand or anywhere abroad but are still slaves of the German taxman. any multinational bank of good standing will advise their clients about the potential problems if their names are popping up in the U.S. or in Germany and recommend to convert EUR or USD and transfer CHF via Zürich. how long the latter will be "safe" is a different animal.

Naam, I don't have a lot of time to reply on this, but the fact is that a payment to an offshore USD account does not have to go through a US bank. The accounting as I said may well affect correspondent accounts in the US (our USD accounts are drawn on our branch in New York) but the payment will not directly involve the US.

When I have time I will elaborate with an example. Right now I am pretty booked and need to run. Thanks

Ian