Home credit firm expands business

Philippines (HCPH), a unit of a Prague-based company offering in-store financing for purchasing appliances and gadgets, plans to expand its nationwide footprint and product offerings to increase its customer base to one million milestone by the end of 2017. 

“In terms of development, when the company on the global level looks at our development, we are so far been the fastest growing within the group and they keep on being surprised on how quickly we grow,” said HCPH Chief Executive Officer Annica Witschard.

HCPH is now in about 2,000 partner outlets in Metro Manila and 20 Philippine provinces, with a blueprint to expand its business to other developed cities.

“Most of them (are) still in the NCR (National Capital Region). It’s really the biggest in terms of retail (and) the biggest where you’ll find the customers. But of course as we expand, we’ll also see the larger cities of Visayas and Mindanao,” said Witschard.

The firm currently has 725,000 customers mainly comprising the young people and young families, three years after its operations were launched in the Philippines in 2013.

The consumer finance company reached the 600,000-customer mark in December 2016, a two-fold increase from 280,000 customers in July 2016.

“This is definitely a unique market, as the Philippines’ low credit card penetration rate combined with the high unbanked rate contributed to a very high demand for non-bank consumer financing. This demand was met through our continued expansion in third quarter and fourth quarter last year and increasing dominance of our zero percent interest products. And this also puts us in a great position to have another record year in 2017,” she added.

The company’s core business is non-cash, no-collateral in-store financing for purchasing home appliances and mobile devices, such as mobile phones and laptops, through monthly installments without a credit card.

HCPH is part of Home Credit B.V., an international consumer finance provider with operations in 11 countries, including the United States, India and China.