Mr. Surat Leelataviwat, Executive Vice President, said that K-Home Loan recorded favorable growth in 2018, with new loans reaching over 74 billion Baht and outstanding loans totaling approximately 280 billion Baht, up 12 percent YoY. The impressive increase was attributable to cooperation in marketing and sales channels with key business partners in the property sector; KBank's efforts to offer customers complete home loan products, both before and after sales; plus strong branch and sales teams. KBank also improved a channel for customers considering the K-Home Loan Refinance or K-Home for Cash service to view the product details or directly contact our officers for more information, and apply via K PLUS. Other channels have been improved to offer customers convenience in obtaining K-Home Loan information and services.
Looking into 1Q19, it is expected that home loans overall will continue to post high growth in advance of the Bank of Thailand's enforcement of a new measure in April 2019, aimed at supervising home loans and building long-term economic stability. As part of our endeavor to bolster home loans, KBank will continue the two major campaigns that have seen good response from our customers since late 2018, i.e., the K-Home Loan Refinance campaign featuring free mortgage registration fee of up to 200,000 Baht along with special interest rate, and the K-Home for Cash campaign offering special interest rate for the first two years at MRR-1% p.a., and MRR-0.5% p.a. thereafter, along with free appraisal fee worth 3,000 Baht.
Mr. Surat added that KBank is aiming for approximately 16 billion Baht in new home loans during 1Q19, and projects that new home loans will reach 66 billion Baht in 2019.