DBS Group Holdings, Southeast Asia's largest bank, plans to add 30 to 40 outlets on the mainland in the near term as it tries to press into the competitive retail banking market.

The Singapore-based bank, which recently received approval to incorporate locally and which is expected to launch its mainland subsidiary in Shanghai on Monday, also said on Friday that it will more than quadruple its staff to 2,000 in the next five years to support its growth.

After 17 years of mainly concentrating on corporate banking and trade finance on the mainland, the bank is looking to move into the retail market, which would help raise mainland's contribution to its global profit to 7 to 9 percent from the less than 1 percent that the bank's operations here currently provide.

Overseas banks, which now represent less than 2 percent of market on the mainland, see increasing opportunities here. In a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of 40 foreign lenders active on the mainland - including HSBC, Citigroup and Standard Chartered Bank - only a third of the respondents said the market was overcrowded, even though 74 foreign banks have branch operations and a further 186 have representative offices.

"The mainland market is full of competition, so we will attract customers with innovative products," said Teresa S. Y. Lin, CEO of DBS Bank (China) Ltd, during a press conference on Friday.

Despite its relative lack of experience in the mainland's consumer banking market, DBS is confident it will succeed because of its rich experience in wealth management in its home country as well as in Hong Kong.

"We have been preparing to enter the retail banking business since last year. We will do both consumer and corporate banking on the mainland in the coming five years, as we have done in each market," she said.

But like other overseas lenders that are constrained by the limited number of outlets on the mainland, DBS's retail banking business - with five branches and four representative offices - will mainly target relatively well-off customers earning at least 8,000 yuan per month.

"Our retail banking will target high-end customers with about 500,000 yuan in their accounts and also emerging middle-class clients," Lin said.

(China Daily May 26, 2007)