Oct. 16--Krungthai Card Plc (KTC), the country's largest card issuer, expects its approval rate of personal loans might return to its normal 35 percent of applications in the fourth quarter with an improving economy and its tighter lending criteria.

Sudaporn Janwatanagool, executive vice-president for the personal loan business, said approvals had dropped to 15 percent-20 percent in the second quarter this year from 30-35 percent in normal economic times.

The rate improved in the third quarter to 25 percent on signs of economic recovery.

"We'll watch the economy the last quarter to make sure it is recovering, then we might ease up our approving rate to the same as last year," Ms Sudaporn said. "We might consider easing approval criteria for sectors such as automobiles that have appeared to pick up."

Since the beginning of this year, the company has focused on building quality customers who have stable income sin order to reduce its loan default risk.

For KTC Cash Revolve personal loans, it raised the minimum monthly income requirement to 10,000 baht from 8,000. Minimum income for a KTC fixed income loan is 15,000 baht, up from 10,000.

Non-performing loans decreased from 2.5 percent of outstanding personal loans in June to 2.3 percent in September. The company expects the NPL rate to remain between 2 percent and 2.5 percent at the end of the year.

In the first nine months of the year, KTC lent 1.181 billion baht with 33,500 customer accounts. It has a 5 percent share of the total personal loan market worth 250 billion baht.

The company aims to have 519,600 personal loan accounts at the end of 2009, up from 503,000 currently.

At the end of June, KTC had 35 billion baht in net credit card receivables and 10.9 billion in KTC Cash personal loan receivables. Total assets stood at 48.87 billion baht.

The Krung Thai Bank affiliate earned a net profit in the first half of 201.67 million baht, down from 317.68 million a year earlier. Revenue rose 7 percent to 6.21 billion baht.

KTC shares closed yesterday on the SET at 12.50 baht, down 70 satang, in trade worth 38.6 million baht.

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