Hong Kong: Dah Sing Launches New Bricks And Clicks Bank

by Mary Swire, Tax-news.com, Hong Kong

27 April 2001

Hong Kong's Dah Sing Financial Holdings launched a new bank earlier this week which offers both Internet and branch services. The bank's original plans were for Hong Kong's first stand-alone e-bank, announced in March, but instead the newly-launched bank, called Mevas, provides banking services through a 24-hour hotline, the Internet, a telephone banking system, electronic teller machines, three Mevas service centres, and branches of Dah Sing Bank.

Executive Director Derek Wong said that as far as the original plans were concerned, the group was merely hoping to set up a bank with electronic delivery channels. He said: 'As far as Mevas bank is concerned, we announced this project at a time when a lot of Internet banks were appearing in other countries....I have already tried to clarify that what we are trying to build isn't a single channel Internet bank, but a multichannel e-bank.'

Analysts are not surprised that the final product from Dah Sing is not a pure virtual banking entity. Kevin Chan, head of Hong Kong-China banking research at Nomura, was quoted this week as saying: 'The environment is very different from the one in which the group first talked about e-banking. Shareholders now don't like heavy investment in things like technology. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the business model. The problem is simply in the timing of the investment.'

According to reports, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority declined to reveal whether the new bank applied for authorisation to operate as a virtual bank, but Mr Wong stressed the bank 'meets all the requirements which the HKMA sets out.'

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