Jacob Ng: Giving credit card holders more freedom to choose
Jacob Ng had a world of opportunities open to him. The youngest son of Jacinto Ng, who founded a handful of successful businesses, including the Rebisco Group of Companies and AUB (Asia United Bank), was exposed to their family’s businesses from a young age.
Jacob was thrust into the family business — in this case, a career in banking. While the Development Studies graduate had initially planned on working in government, his dad helped him discover his passion for banking. After a stint at their real estate company, Earth+ Style, and an MBA at the Thunderbird School of International Management in Arizona, Jacob entered the industry through a job at Citibank, and finally landed in AUB.
As the chief transformation officer, vice president, and head of consumer lending at AUB Corporation, Jacob is running the banking company to be one of the top 10 banks in the country asset-wise. “The bank has to expand,” Jacob says. “You can’t stay small in today’s environment or you’ll become irrelevant. Your people won’t want to stay around, and your customers will say ‘I can get better rates, better products somewhere else, so I don’t have to stick with you.’ We have to continue pushing and growing.”
AUB is in the top 15 of the country’s largest banks, but Jacob is aiming higher, especially in today’s economy. “Externally, the banking environment is very, very, very competitive now,” he says. “There’s a lot of money in the system so that makes all the banks very competitive and that squeezes margins all around.”
In many different ways, Jacob is growing AUB. The “benevolent dictator,” as he describes himself, wants to take the bank in a different direction. “We are known primarily as a corporate bank: our clients are mostly SMEs, mainly catering to the Chinese market. But I also want us to be active in the consumer side.”
AUB’s efforts to capture more consumers took form in their new cards. “Credit cards is one of the avenues into the consumer market,” Jacob says. “With it, we now have a complete set of products to include with the usual auto loans, housing, and salary loans. We can use credit cards to cross-sell, to get more business from existing customers, or to help us open new doors and get new customers. As credit cards is probably one of the most frequently used products after ATM cards, it allows us to continuously engage our clients in terms of our promos offers and credit card features.”
AUB has partnered with MasterCard on credit cards meant for different market segments. They take pride in their AUB Easy MasterCard being the only credit card that gives the cardholder the freedom to choose how often to pay, how much to pay and exactly when to pay. Their Premium Credit Cards (Gold and Platinum), on the other hand, have the lowest interest rates in the market and offer rewarding travel perks.
The bank looked to MasterCard as a partner in their foray into the cards business. This includes partnerships in their promotions such as the Napa Valley Vineyard Priceless Experience, wherein a lucky cardholder was treated to a trip to Napa Valley, California, for a luxurious wining and dining experience.
“As we are a new player in the market, partnerships are vital so that we can efficiently achieve our intended reach,” the AUB executive explains.
In the next three years, the AUB Cards Business is set to complete all credit card product suites such as the Secured Card, Corporate Cards, SME Credit Cards, and Co- Branded Cards. “The long-term goal is to be able to come up with unique and innovative card products in the market,” Jacob concludes.