The Gold Circle Awards, now in its 10th Year, recognizes elite service, high scoring peer-to-peer customer reviews from the 22 million reviews on Agoda, as well as excellence in pricing and availability.

Globally, 43 of the winning hotel partners have been presented the accolade for four years consecutively, including Thailand’s Sri Panwa, a 5-star luxury pool villa hotel that has secured the highest review score in its category.

In Thailand, Bangkok is home to the most Gold Circle winners with 58 hotel partners represented, followed by Phuket (37) and Pattaya (30).

Gold Circle Awards ceremonies will take place in over 30 locations around the world, including three events in Thailand at Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Phuket, from October through December 2018.

TRIS RATING

“BBB” with stable outlook for Syntec Construction

TRIS Rating affirms the company rating on Syntec Construction Plc (SYNTEC) at “BBB”.

The rating reflects the company’s strong market position in the construction of high-rise buildings and its robust profitability.

The rating also recognizes SYNTEC’s resilience to a market downturn, aided by its sizable backlog and ample liquidity. However, the rating is constrained by a high reliance on the end markets SYNTEC serves and the cyclical nature of the engineering and construction (E&C) industry. The rating also takes into consideration a potential rise in leverage as SYNTEC plans to grow its real estate for rent business.

SET DEBUT

North East Rubber, a rubber product manufacturer and distributor, started share trading in the Stock Exchange of Thailand yesterday under the ticker symbol “NER”.

NER produces and distributes rubber products including ribbed smoked sheet, standard Thai rubber and mixtures rubber for distributing to domestic and international automobile manufacturers and intermediaries in China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia.

“The investment may raise our cost of operations. However, this is a long-term investment that will have less impact on our business,” he said.

He added that if the bank increases its minimum retail rate by 0.25 per cent to the same level as other commercial banks, its net profit will rise immediately. But it  does not because of its concern of  the  customers, he added.

The financial statement included the third-quarter results of Trans Ad Solution Co Ltd (Trans Ad) and Roctec Technology Ltd (Roctec). It represented a revenue increase of 80.6 per cent year on year, he said.

Reflecting confidence in their current roles and future potential in the industry, more than four in five women (83 per cent) currently working in the tech industry globally say they intend to remain in the tech industry for the next five to ten years.

Key findings from the 2018 report include that since the crisis, the global banking industry and financial regulators have worked in tandem to move the financial system to a solid grounding with a higher level of safety. Global Tier 1 capital ratio—one measure of banking system safety—increased from 9.8 per cent in 2007 to 13.2 per cent in 2017. Other measures of risk have improved as well; for example, the ratio of tangible equity to tangible assets has increased from 4.6 per cent in 2010 to 6.2 per cent in 2017.

However, growth for the banking industry continues to be muted—industry revenues grew at 2 per cent per year over the last five years, significantly below banking’s historical annual growth of 5 to 6 per cent.

Furthermore, global banking return on equity (ROE) has hovered in a narrow range between 8 and 9 per cent since 2012. We find significant geographical variance. Banks in both the UK and Western Europe increased their ROEs significantly whereas their counterparts in the US and Japan registered declines

Emerging markets are beginning to falter. In 2017, the price-to-book ratio of developed-market banks overtook that of emerging market banks for the first time in 14 years

However, the banking sector’s price-to-book ratio was consistently lower than that of every other major sector over the 2012-17 period—trailing even relatively sluggish industries such as utilities, energy, and materials. This difference persists even when other valuation multiples, such as price-to-earnings ratios, are compared.

At the heart of this report is McKinsey’s new analysis (sizing and mapping) of the global financial intermediation system – the system that stores, transfers, lends, invests, and risk manages roughly $260 trillion in funds. The revenue pool associated with intermediation—the vast majority of which is captured by banks— was roughly $5 trillion in 2017, or approximately 190 basis points (Note as recently as 2011, the average was approximately 230 basis points). The report explores how this revenue pool could evolve over time.

Miklos Dietz, report author and McKinsey senior partner said We believe the lack of investor faith in the future of banking is tied, at least in part, to doubts about whether banks can maintain their historical dominance of the financial intermediation system. The report looks at the two forces – technological (and data) innovation and shifts in the regulatory and broader socio-political environment – that are reshaping the market structure of financial intermediation and the role of banks in this system. These dual forces of are opening great swaths of this financial intermediation system to new entrants, including other large financial institutions, specialist finance providers, and technology firms.

McKinsey sees the current complex and interlocking system of financial intermediation streamlined by the forces of technology and regulation into a simpler system over the coming years, with three layers:

Everyday commerce and transactions (eg deposits, payments, consumer loans). Intermediation here would be virtually invisible and ultimately embedded into the routine digital lives of customers.

The second layer would comprise of products and services in which relationships and insights are the predominant differentiators (eg M&A, derivatives structuring, wealth management, corporate lending). Leaders here will use artificial intelligence to radically enhance, but not entirely replace, human interaction.

The third layer will revolve primarily around business-to-business services where scale will be a key differentiator (eg parts of sales and trading, standardized portions of wealth and asset management)

Institutional intermediation would be heavily automated and provided by efficient technology infrastructures with low costs.

The firm also announced that it was aiming for 6-per-cent growth by the end of this year.

Pratheep Kamath, senior vice president, digital and decision management at Citi Thailand, said the firm’s Citi mobile application aims to provide convenience to Citi’s credit-card customers in managing their credit cards using the Global Platform system.

The platform is built on a system that meets global security standards and provides a comprehensive range of digital banking services, including Scan and Pay that enables its customers to make payments through their smartphones without having to carry cash or a credit cards with them. They can also take out cash loans on their credit cards, convert their transactions into monthly instalments, temporarily lock their credit card to prevent misuse and unlock it when needed, and also create a new ATM PIN security on their smartphones.

He said the mobile app also provides a new way to redeem reward points through the application of its partners such as Samsung Pay and AirAsia or via Citi Line Connect Citi World Privileges. It has more than 11,000 locations in over 90 countries to provide privileges to its customers.

Warote Nguitragool, head of Citi Rewards, said Citi Thailand was the first bank in Thailand to meet the regulatory sandbox eligibility criteria that provides Scan to Pay to customers, which allows customers to pay for products and services via OR Code, or to use their credit cards without having to carry them to shopping malls and retail shops such as The Mall, Central Online and Major Cineplex. It is also offering Bt120 cash back to customers that use the Scan and Pay service for the first time and spend Bt300 per sales slip.

“Mobile banking is an important strategy for us to allow customers easy access to our services,” said Kamath. “We started providing mobile application in 2016 and this year we have seen a 100-per-cent increase in customers participating with mobile banking. Thailand is among the top three countries in the region where our customers access our services via mobile application,” said Kamath.

He added that the firm would continue future development of its mobile application to support the national digital identification and PromptPay services.

He said the firm has more than 1 million customers and more than 50 per cent of the customers had access to its services via mobile application. It has around 40 per cent active mobile users.